Ultra-compact plasmonic electron accelerator on chip

Electron accelerators are essential equipment in science and industry. However, their large footprint, ranging in length up to kilometers, limits their availability. Hence, compact solution to this problem is one of the major trends in advance accelerators. In this paper, a design of micro-scale electron accelerator based on surface plasmons is proposed. Due to the near-field enhancement effect of plasmons, this structure establishes extremely strong field for acceleration within less than 1 mu m. Simulation results shows that driven by infrared laser, the designed accelerator with 5 GV/m peak field deliver more than 0.39 keV energy to electrons. Cascaded in chain, this structure can realize fully electron acceleration, and has the potential of becoming the critical element of future integrated free electron light source lab on chip.