All Optical Control of Beam Dynamics in a DLA

Abstract

Dielectric laser acceleration draws upon nano-fabrication techniques to build photonic structures for high gradient electron acceleration. At the small spatial scales characteristic of these structures conventional accelerator techniques become ineffective at stabilizing the beam dynamics. Instead we propose a scheme to stabilize the motion by directly modulating the drive laser, in analogy to a radio-frequency-quadrupole. Here we present a design for a programmable `lattice' being built at UCLA's Pegasus laboratory. The accelerator accepts an unmodulated 3.5 MeV electron beam and then bunches and accelerates the beam by 1.5 MeV over a distance of 2 cm.