ELECTRON SOURCE
R. B. Yoder, Dept. of Physics, Manhattanville College, Purchase, NY 10577
G. Travish, J. B. Rosenzweig, UCLA Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, Los Angeles, CA 90095
Abstract STRUCTURE OVERVIEW
We describe a resonant laser-powered structure, measur- The structure described here is based on the relativis-
ing 1 mm or less in every dimension, that is capable of tic slab-symmetric dielectric-based accelerator proposed in
generating and accelerating electron beams to low ener- [1]. In these structures, a pair of parallel dielectric slabs
gies ( 1–2 MeV). Like several other recently investigated is separated by a narrow vacuum gap and bounded above
dielectric-based accelerators, the device is planar and res- and below by a reflective layer. Periodic slots in the reflec-
onantly excited with a side-coupled laser; however, exten- tor provide a means for coupling radiation into the gap and
sive modifications are necessary for synchronous accelera- also enforce longitudinal periodicity in the structure fields.
tion and focusing of nonrelativistic particles. Electrons are In the relativistic device, the invariance of the structure in
generated within the device via a novel ferroelectric-based
the wide transverse dimension ( ) leads to a longitudinal
cathode. The accelerator is constructed from dielectric ma- accelerating field which is also constant in the short trans-
terial using conventional microfabrication techniques and
verse dimension . The physical consequence of this in-
powered by a 1- m gigawatt laser. The electron beams pro- dependence is a suppression of transverse wakefields. If
duced are suitable for a number of existing industrial and the structure dimensions (vacuum gap and dielectric thick-
medical applications. ness) are correctly chosen, the structure will be resonant at
the laser frequency; the field pattern will be dominated by a
INTRODUCTION longitudinal standing wave with phase velocity . The field
enhancement factor depends on the details of the coupling
Laser acceleration of electrons in a resonant structure has into the structure, but the accelerating field is typically 4 to
been a topic of recent interest, with several schemes pro- 10 times larger than the incident laser field.
posed [1],[2],[3] in the past few years. These designs have
several characteristics in common: they are built from di- Accelerating Mode
electric material and hence able to withstand high electric
fields for short pulse lengths; they minimize beam wake- To construct a sub-relativistic accelerating structure, we
require first that the phase velocity along the beam tra-
fields by exploiting symmetry; and they operate in the rel-
ativistic limit, with electron velocity
. These struc- jectory (the direction) match the particle velocity, or
. We begin by analyzing a structure which
tures exhibit high gradients ( 100s of MeV/m) but require
external beam injection into a narrow aperture, as the char- is uniform and very wide in the dimension. Assuming
acteristic dimensions are on the order of the laser wave- ! "
transverse invariance of the fields, or
# $
%
, the disper-
length.
A laser-powered resonant structure incorporating a cath-
sion relation is
" , which gives an
imaginary value for . The accelerating mode is then de-
ode or particle source would avoid this injection issue and scribed by
essentially become a monolithic particle source. Given that & ' # ()
* -+ ,.0/1'32 465 * +-,.'7
*
+-,.0/98
):; +-,.%'<
*
these devices scale with laser wavelength, such a source
could be extremely small. However, accelerating parti- (1)
cles from rest introduces significant complication into the
physics. We will show that a submillimeter electron beam and a resonance condition on the structure dimensions,
source can be constructed using slab-symmetric dielectric which is found by applying boundary conditions and
layers and an integrated cathode; the energies produced matching field components, is given by
: = > 5 4 A+-,B0/ 8
will be weakly relativistic (1–2 MeV). The resulting device
=0>@? +E,BGFHI'7JK5 *7L0( (2)
: DC ;
is unsuitable for high-energy physics applications, with
low trapping fraction, poor efficiency, and diverging out- C
put beam, but could have a variety of applications in indus- = >
where is the relative permittivity of the dielectric, MI
try or medicine as a micro-sized radiation source. Further- 2 = > 5A4GN 'OP -* , and and J are as shown in Figure 1(a).
more, planar dielectric-based structures can be constructed C
vary with beam velocity —and must hence be tapered as
We note immediately that the structure dimensions will
to very demanding tolerances using layer-deposition tech-
niques common in the integrated-circuit industry.
Work supported in part by U.S. Dept. of Energy. tion for AQR4%S = > . As the structure must also be modu-
the beam energy increases—and that there is no eigensolu-
y
reflecting layer
(conductor/dielectric)
Focusing
laser light
ebeam (polarized in z)
cathode z One can determine, from the Maxwell equations, the
(wide)
location x field and force components on a charged particle within the
vacuum gap for the -invariant structure described above.
ε
dielectric b
While there can be no net force in due to symmetry, we
a
find that the force in the -direction is given to first order
by
&
" : . #/98 : ; . <'
*-(
(a)
βλ ? A@CB ; ED$F #DGF (3)
ic
c al
that is, the transverse fields are defocusing in for phases in
bO3)
$% e the accelerating bucket, though they vanish in the relativis-
e
n tic limit. While this first-order effect is unavoidable unless
the transverse symmetry in is broken, it can be offset for
(b) ! "# " relativistic velocities by a second-order (ponderomotive)
focusing force due to the backward-going wave component
Figure 1: Conceptual drawings of (a) the accelerating in this standing-wave structure [5]. The backward wave
J
structure; and (b) the cathode assembly. Typical dimen-
does contribute to the dynamics for the sub-relativistic elec-
sions:
C
0.05–0.1 m;
mm or 1600 structure periods.
0.27–0.3 m; total length 1
:9 4
trons, as described in the Simulation section below, but for
low values of ( ) the defocusing still predominates.
For low energies we must introduce field variation in in
order to address the focusing issue. By shaping the struc-
Cathode
ture in the -dimension, one in effect imposes a nonzero
The constraint on
(real or imaginary) . If is large enough and imaginary,
mentioned above implies that to be one obtains a structure which is focusing in the direction
trapped and accelerated, the beam may not start from rest.
=> and defocusing in .
For example, if the dielectric is silicon or germanium ( One possibility for stable acceleration over hundreds of
11.69 for Si), the minimum beam energy for acceleration is periods is the use of a canted structure which maintains
23.4 keV. We propose a dual-function integrated cathode in
focusing in the small ( ) direction while alternating trans-
which electrons are generated by field emission and then
verse kicks in the direction. (See Fig. 2.) In this scenario,
accelerated in a quasi-DC electric field to at least 25 keV. the coupling slots are rotated by a small -dependent an-
The cathode design is shown conceptually in Fig. 1(b)
and consists of a small field-emitting region, such as an ar- the defocusing kick
?
gle, in effect using a nonzero transverse velocity to oppose
. After several structure periods,
ray of graphite needles, deposited onto a ferroelectric crys- when the particle has crossed the centerline, the slot angle
tal (FEC) such as lithium niobate (LiNbO & ). FECs gener- is changed to the opposite sign, and the process can con-
ally have pyroelectric properties, that is, when heated or tinue.
cooled they develop a temporary polarization charge ')(
4 0
3
–1x109 V/m
Figure 2: An alternating-angle canted structure which
y [mm]
would be focusing in both and , shown viewed from 2
above ( ). The coupling slots are rotated by a small an- 1
–2x109 V/m
energies (
0.3–0.4) the particle phase in fact slips, due 5
200
CONCLUSIONS
200 400 0
] A laser-powered micro-accelerator appears to be possi-
0.01
ble, according to preliminary investigations. Many ques-
tions remain to be answered, including the particle dy-
0.00
5
y µm]
coupling the laser to the structure, breakdown and heating
5 10 15 20 ]
-0.005 limits on the dielectric material, and detailed construction
-0.01
method. The tolerances required for the micro-accelerator
are well within those achieved by modern microfabrica-
tion techniques, and the dielectric materials proposed for
Figure 3: Numerical results from single-particle pushing the micro-accelerator (such as silicon and germanium) are
through analytic fields. (a) Particle energy along the struc- well suited to these construction methods.
ture, assuming a GW-class laser (3.5 GV/m field strength
within the gap). (b) Focusing using the canted-slot ap-
proach, showing values of and in the first 20 periods of REFERENCES
the structure. The structure is focusing in (dashed line) [1] R. B. Yoder and J. B. Rosenzweig, Phys. Rev. STAB 8, 111301
and alternates defocusing kicks in (solid line). (2005), and references therein.
[2] Z. Zhang, S. G. Tantawi, R. D. Ruth, Phys. Rev. STAB 8,
Simulation of the electron energies produced by the cath- 071302 (2005).
ode was estimated using the particle-in-cell code OOPIC. [3] A. Mizrahi and L. Schächter, Phys. Rev. E 70, 016505 (2004).
A stationary polarization charge layer was used to produce [4] G. Rosenman et al., J. Appl. Phys. 88, 6109 (2000).
an electric field, with “emitted” electrons created on its sur-
[5] J. Rosenzweig, A. Murokh, C. Pellegrini, Phys. Rev. Lett. 74,
face. Fig. 4(a) shows the field produced, which approaches
uniformity in , and Fig. 4(b) shows the electron energy
2467 (1995).