Direct Laser Acceleration of 28 keV Electrons at a Single Dielectric Grating

Direct laser acceleration exploiting the large optical field strength of short laser pulses and the proximity of a dielectric structure can support high acceleration gradients and may therefore lead to much smaller accelerators, with potential application in table-top free electron lasers. We report a proof-of-concept experiment demonstrating direct laser acceleration of non-relativistic 28 keV electrons derived from a conventional scanning electron microscope column at a single fused-silica grating. The electrons pass the grating as closely as 50 nm and interact with the third spatial harmonic, which is excited by 100 fs Titanium:sapphire laser pulses with a peak electric field of 2.85 GV/m. The observed maximum acceleration gradient of 25 MeV/m is already comparable to state- of-the-art RF structures. This work represents the first demonstration of scalable laser acceleration and of the inverse Smith-Purcell effect in the optical regime.