Massive particle acceleration on a photonic chip via spatial-temporal modulation

Abstract

Recently, the spectral manipulation of single photons has been achieved through spatial-temporal modulation of the optical refractive index. Here, we generalize this mechanism to massive particles, i.e. realizing the acceleration or deceleration of particles through the spatial-temporal modulation of potential induced by lasers. On a photonic integrated chip, we propose a MeV-magnitude acceleration by distributed modulation units driven by lasers. The mechanism could also be applied to atom trapping, which promises a millimeter-scale decelerator to trap atoms. The spatial-temporal modulation approach is universal and could be generalized to other systems, which may play a significant role in hybrid photonic chip and microscale particle manipulation.