Plasmonic metasurface for efficient ultrashort pulse laser-driven particle acceleration

Abstract

A laser-driven particle accelerator based on plasmonic nanoantennas is proposed and analyzed. The concept utilizes the enhancement and localization of the electric field by nanoantennas to maximize the acceleration gradient and to overcome potential metallic losses. The structure is optimized for accelerating relativistic particles using a femtosecond laser source operating at 800 nm and is shown to support the bandwidth of ultrashort laser pulses (up to 16 fs) while providing a high acceleration gradient potentially reaching 11.6 GV/m.