Hannover 2013 – scientific programme
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Q: Fachverband Quantenoptik und Photonik
Q 34: Ultrashort laser pulses: Applications
Q 34.7: Talk
Tuesday, March 19, 2013, 15:30–15:45, F 142
Direct laser acceleration of non-relativistic electrons at a dielectric grating structure — •John Breuer1 and Peter Hommelhoff1,2 — 1Max-Planck-Institut für Quantenoptik, Garching bei München, Deutschland — 2Department für Physik, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen, Deutschland
Direct laser acceleration using dielectric structures has been envisioned to revolutionize particle accelerators [1]. Grating structures can support very high acceleration gradients [2] and may therefore lead to much smaller accelerators that can operate at high repetition rates, with application in free electron lasers. We report a proof-of-concept experiment demonstrating the first observation of direct laser acceleration of non-relativistic electrons using an evanescent mode excited by Titanium:sapphire laser pulses at 800nm at a dielectric grating. This work also represents the first demonstration of realistically scalable laser acceleration. We observe a maximum acceleration gradient of 25 MeV/m that is already comparable to state-of-the-art acceleration structures of today's accelerators operated with radio frequency fields. For relativistic electrons about two orders of magnitude larger acceleration gradients are expected.
[1] J. Rosenzweig, A. Murokh, C. Pellegrini, PRL 74, 2467 (1995).
[2] T. Plettner, R. L. Byer et al., PRSTAB, 9, 111301 (2006).