Full-scale simulations of dielectric laser-driven accelerators

Dielectric laser acceleration (DLA) holds great promise for a new class of high-energy charged particle accelerators. Taking advantage of the high field intensities available from laser sources as well as the high damage threshold of dielectric materials, DLAs can attain more than an order of magnitude higher field gradient—energy gain per unit length—than conventional, microwave cavity-based accelerators. However, the design considerations for DLAs have notable differences from those of conventional accelerators. In this presentation, we first present the physics and requirements of DLAs, illustrating many of the principles through designs of photonic crystal waveguide accelerators. We then describe recent results on simulations of grating structures, discussing the simulation techniques and comparison with experiments.