Acceleration of relativistic beams using laser-generated terahertz pulses

Hibberd, Morgan T and Healy, Alisa L and Lake, Daniel S and Georgiadis, Vasileios and Smith, Elliott JH and Finlay, Oliver J and Pacey, Thomas H and Jones, James K and Saveliev, Yuri and Walsh, David A and Sneddon, Edward W. and Appleby, Robert B. and Burt, Graeme and Graham, Darren M. and Jamison, Steven (2020) Acceleration of relativistic beams using laser-generated terahertz pulses. Nature Photonics, 14. 755–759. ISSN 1749-4885

Text (Hibberd_Manuscript)
Hibberd_Manuscript.pdf - Accepted Version
Download (4MB)

Abstract

Particle accelerators driven by laser-generated terahertz (THz) pulses promise unprecedented control over the energy–time phase space of particle bunches compared with conventional radiofrequency technology. Here we demonstrate acceleration of a relativistic electron beam in a THz-driven linear accelerator. Narrowband THz pulses were tuned to the phase-velocity-matched operating frequency of a rectangular dielectric-lined waveguide for extended collinear interaction with 35 MeV, 60 pC electron bunches, imparting multicycle energy modulation to chirped (6 ps) bunches and injection phase-dependent energy gain (up to 10 keV) to subcycle (2 ps) bunches. These proof-of-principle results establish a route to whole-bunch linear acceleration of subpicosecond particle beams, directly applicable to scaled-up and multistaged concepts capable of preserving beam quality, thus marking a key milestone for future THz-driven acceleration of relativistic beams