Terahertz-driven linear electron acceleration

The cost, size and availability of electron accelerators are dominated by the achievable accelerating gradient. Conventional high-brightness radio-frequency accelerating structures operate with 30–50 MeV m −1 gradients. Electron accelerators driven with optical or infrared sources have demonstrated...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Nature communications Vol. 6; no. 1; p. 8486
Main Authors:	Nanni, Emilio A., Huang, Wenqian R., Hong, Kyung-Han, Ravi, Koustuban, Fallahi, Arya, Moriena, Gustavo, Dwayne Miller, R. J., Kärtner, Franz X.
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	English
Published:	London Nature Publishing Group UK 06-10-2015 Nature Publishing Group Nature Pub. Group
Subjects:	639/766/1960/1137 639/766/400/561 70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSICS Electrons fluids and plasma physics Humanities and Social Sciences Lasers multidisciplinary optical physics Optics physical sciences Science Science (multidisciplinary) X-rays United States > US Massachusetts Germany
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Summary:	The cost, size and availability of electron accelerators are dominated by the achievable accelerating gradient. Conventional high-brightness radio-frequency accelerating structures operate with 30–50 MeV m −1 gradients. Electron accelerators driven with optical or infrared sources have demonstrated accelerating gradients orders of magnitude above that achievable with conventional radio-frequency structures. However, laser-driven wakefield accelerators require intense femtosecond sources and direct laser-driven accelerators suffer from low bunch charge, sub-micron tolerances and sub-femtosecond timing requirements due to the short wavelength of operation. Here we demonstrate linear acceleration of electrons with keV energy gain using optically generated terahertz pulses. Terahertz-driven accelerating structures enable high-gradient electron/proton accelerators with simple accelerating structures, high repetition rates and significant charge per bunch. These ultra-compact terahertz accelerators with extremely short electron bunches hold great potential to have a transformative impact for free electron lasers, linear colliders, ultrafast electron diffraction, X-ray science and medical therapy with X-rays and electron beams. Pulses of light offer a way to create particle accelerators that are a fraction of the size of conventional approaches. Here, the authors demonstrate the linear acceleration of electrons with kiloelectronvolt energy gain and in extremely short bunches using optically-generated terahertz pulses.
Bibliography:	ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23 USDOE FG02-08ER41532
ISSN:	2041-1723 2041-1723
DOI:	10.1038/ncomms9486