Accelerator on a chip : design, fabrication, and demonstration of grating-based dielectric microstructures for laser-driven acceleration of electrons
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- The enormous size and cost of current state-of-the-art accelerators based upon conventional radio-frequency (RF) technology has spawned a great interest in developing new acceleration concepts that are more compact and economical. Micro-fabricated dielectric laser accelerators (DLAs) are an attractive approach as such structures can support accelerating fields one to two orders of magnitude higher than RF cavity-based accelerators. DLAs use commercial lasers as a power source, which are smaller and less expensive than RF klystrons that power today's accelerators. In addition, DLAs are fabricated via mass-producible, low cost, lithographic techniques. However, despite several DLA structures being proposed recently, no successful demonstration of acceleration in these structures had been shown until this work. This thesis reports the first observation of high-gradient (exceeding 300 MeV/m) acceleration of electrons in a DLA. Relativistic (60 MeV) electrons are energy modulated over 563 optical periods of a fused silica grating structure, powered by a 800 nm wavelength mode-locked Ti:Sapphire laser. The observed results are in agreement with analytical models and electrodynamic simulations. By comparison, conventional modern linear accelerators operate at gradients of 10-30 MeV/m; and the first linear RF cavity accelerator was 10 RF periods (1 m long) with a gradient of approximately 1.6 MV/m. Our results set the stage for the development of future multi-staged DLA devices composed of integrated on-chip systems. This would enable compact table-top MeV to GeV scale accelerators for security scanners and medical therapy, university-scale x-ray light sources for biological and materials research, portable medical imaging devices, and would substantially reduce the size and cost of a future multi-TeV scale collider.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Publication date | 2015 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | Peralta, Edgar Armando | |
|---|---|---|
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Applied Physics. | |
| Primary advisor | Byer, R. L. (Robert L.), 1942- | |
| Thesis advisor | Byer, R. L. (Robert L.), 1942- | |
| Thesis advisor | Harris, J. S. (James Stewart), 1942- | |
| Thesis advisor | Solgaard, Olav | |
| Advisor | Harris, J. S. (James Stewart), 1942- | |
| Advisor | Solgaard, Olav |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Edgar A. Peralta. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Applied Physics. |
| Thesis | Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stanford University, 2015. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2015 by Edgar Armando Peralta
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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