Publication date: 8th June 2021
Photonics with superior properties can be implemented in a variety of old (silicon, silicon nitride) and new (silicon carbide, diamond) photonic materials by combining state of the art optimization and machine learning techniques (photonics inverse design) with new fabrication approaches. In addition to making photonics more robust to errors in fabrication and temperature, more compact, and more efficient, this approach is also crucial for enabling new photonics applications, such as on chip laser driven particle accelerators, and semiconductor quantum simulators.
We present an experimental demonstration of an integrated particle accelerator based on a silicon chip that was designed using a photonic inverse-design approach. By comparing the measured electron energy spectra with particle-tracking simulations, we infer an acceleration gradient of 30.5 mega–electron volts per meter. On-chip acceleration provides the possibility for a completely integrated mega–electron volt-scale accelerator.