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Demonstration of sub-luminal propagation of single-cycle terahertz pulses for particle acceleration
The sub-luminal phase velocity of electromagnetic waves in free space is generally unobtainable, being closely linked to forbidden faster than light group velocities. The requirement of sub-luminal phase-velocity in laser-driven particle acceleration schemes imposes a limit on the total acceleration...
Autores principales: | , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Nature Publishing Group UK
2017
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5583180/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28871091 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-017-00490-y |
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author | Walsh, D. A. Lake, D. S. Snedden, E. W. Cliffe, M. J. Graham, D. M. Jamison, S. P. |
author_facet | Walsh, D. A. Lake, D. S. Snedden, E. W. Cliffe, M. J. Graham, D. M. Jamison, S. P. |
author_sort | Walsh, D. A. |
collection | PubMed |
description | The sub-luminal phase velocity of electromagnetic waves in free space is generally unobtainable, being closely linked to forbidden faster than light group velocities. The requirement of sub-luminal phase-velocity in laser-driven particle acceleration schemes imposes a limit on the total acceleration achievable in free space, and necessitates the use of dispersive structures or waveguides for extending the field-particle interaction. We demonstrate a travelling source approach that overcomes the sub-luminal propagation limits. The approach exploits ultrafast optical sources with slow group velocity propagation, and a group-to-phase front conversion through nonlinear optical interaction. The concept is demonstrated with two terahertz generation processes, nonlinear optical rectification and current-surge rectification. We report measurements of longitudinally polarised single-cycle electric fields with phase and group velocity between 0.77c and 1.75c. The ability to scale to multi-megavolt-per-metre field strengths is demonstrated. Our approach paves the way towards the realisation of cheap and compact particle accelerators with femtosecond scale control of particles. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-5583180 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2017 |
publisher | Nature Publishing Group UK |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-55831802017-09-07 Demonstration of sub-luminal propagation of single-cycle terahertz pulses for particle acceleration Walsh, D. A. Lake, D. S. Snedden, E. W. Cliffe, M. J. Graham, D. M. Jamison, S. P. Nat Commun Article The sub-luminal phase velocity of electromagnetic waves in free space is generally unobtainable, being closely linked to forbidden faster than light group velocities. The requirement of sub-luminal phase-velocity in laser-driven particle acceleration schemes imposes a limit on the total acceleration achievable in free space, and necessitates the use of dispersive structures or waveguides for extending the field-particle interaction. We demonstrate a travelling source approach that overcomes the sub-luminal propagation limits. The approach exploits ultrafast optical sources with slow group velocity propagation, and a group-to-phase front conversion through nonlinear optical interaction. The concept is demonstrated with two terahertz generation processes, nonlinear optical rectification and current-surge rectification. We report measurements of longitudinally polarised single-cycle electric fields with phase and group velocity between 0.77c and 1.75c. The ability to scale to multi-megavolt-per-metre field strengths is demonstrated. Our approach paves the way towards the realisation of cheap and compact particle accelerators with femtosecond scale control of particles. Nature Publishing Group UK 2017-09-04 /pmc/articles/PMC5583180/ /pubmed/28871091 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-017-00490-y Text en © The Author(s) 2017 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
spellingShingle | Article Walsh, D. A. Lake, D. S. Snedden, E. W. Cliffe, M. J. Graham, D. M. Jamison, S. P. Demonstration of sub-luminal propagation of single-cycle terahertz pulses for particle acceleration |
title | Demonstration of sub-luminal propagation of single-cycle terahertz pulses for particle acceleration |
title_full | Demonstration of sub-luminal propagation of single-cycle terahertz pulses for particle acceleration |
title_fullStr | Demonstration of sub-luminal propagation of single-cycle terahertz pulses for particle acceleration |
title_full_unstemmed | Demonstration of sub-luminal propagation of single-cycle terahertz pulses for particle acceleration |
title_short | Demonstration of sub-luminal propagation of single-cycle terahertz pulses for particle acceleration |
title_sort | demonstration of sub-luminal propagation of single-cycle terahertz pulses for particle acceleration |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5583180/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28871091 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-017-00490-y |
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