Silicon buried gratings for dielectric laser electron accelerators

This paper describes design and simulations of dielectric laser electron accelerators that achieve Gigavolt-per-meter (GV/m) accelerating gradients and wide electron channels(>1 mu m). The accelerator design is based on a silicon buried grating structure that enables flexible phase synchronization, large electron channel fields, and low standing-wave ratio in the material. This design increases the accelerating gradients to more than double those of reported quartz grating accelerators, thereby reducing the input laser fluence by 60% for the same accelerating gradient. With a 100 fs pulsed laser, our silicon buried gratings can achieve a maximum gradient of 1.1 GV/m, indicating that these accelerators have potential for numerous electron-accelerator applications. (C) 2014 AIP Publishing LLC.