Challenges in simulating beam dynamics of dielectric laser acceleration

Uwe Niedermayer*, A. Adelmann, S. Bettoni, M. Calvi, M. Dehler, E. Ferrari, F. Frei, D. Hauenstein, B. Hermann, N. Hiller, R. Ischebeck, C. Lombosi, E. Prat, S. Reiche, L. Rivkin, R. Aßmann, U. Dorda, I. Hartl, W. Kuropka, F. LemeryB. Marchetti, F. Mayet, H. Xuan, J. Zhu, D. S. Black, P. N. Broaddus, R. L. Byer, A. Ceballos, H. Deng, S. Fan, J. Harris, T. Hirano, T. W. Hughes, Y. Jiang, T. Langenstein, K. Leedle, Y. Miao, A. Ody, A. Pigott, N. Sapra, O. Solgaard, L. Su, S. Tan, J. Vuckovic, K. Yang, Z. Zhao, O. Boine-Frankenheim, T. Egenolf, E. Skär, D. Cesar, P. Musumeci, B. Naranjo, J. Rosenzweig, X. Shen, B. Cowan, R. J. England, Z. Huang, H. Cankaya, M. Fakhari, A. Fallahi, F. X. Kärtner, T. Feurer, P. Hommelhoff, J. Illmer, A. Li, A. Mittelbach, J. McNeur, N. Schönenberger, R. Shiloh, A. Tafel, P. Yousefi, M. Kozak, M. Qi, Y. J. Lee, Y. C. Huang, E. Simakov

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

7 Scopus citations

Abstract

Dielectric Laser Acceleration (DLA) achieves the highest gradients among structure-based electron accelerators. The use of dielectrics increases the breakdown field limit, and thus the achievable gradient, by a factor of at least 10 in comparison to metals. Experimental demonstrations of DLA in 2013 led to the Accelerator on a Chip International Program (ACHIP), funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. In ACHIP, our main goal is to build an accelerator on a silicon chip, which can accelerate electrons from below 100 keV to above 1 MeV with a gradient of at least 100 MeV/m. For stable acceleration on the chip, magnet-only focusing techniques are insufficient to compensate the strong acceleration defocusing. Thus, spatial harmonic and Alternating Phase Focusing (APF) laser-based focusing techniques have been developed. We have also developed the simplified symplectic tracking code DLAtrack6D, which makes use of the periodicity and applies only one kick per DLA cell, which is calculated by the Fourier coefficient of the synchronous spatial harmonic. Due to coupling, the Fourier coefficients of neighboring cells are not entirely independent and a field flatness optimization (similarly as in multi-cell cavities) needs to be performed. The simulation of the entire accelerator on a chip by a Particle In Cell (PIC) code is possible, but impractical for optimization purposes. Finally, we have also outlined the treatment of wake field effects in attosecond bunches in the grating within DLAtrack6D, where the wake function is computed by an external solver.

Original languageEnglish
Article number1942031
JournalInternational Journal of Modern Physics A
Volume34
Issue number36
DOIs
StatePublished - 30 Dec 2019
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 World Scientific Publishing Company.

Keywords

  • accelerator
  • ACHIP
  • chip
  • Dielectric
  • laser

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