arXiv subjects

Robert L. Byer

Publications and source records attributed to Robert L. Byer.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2025

Quantum sensing of electron beams using solid-state spins

Scattering experiments with energetic particles, such as free electrons, have been historically used to reveal the quantum structure of matter. However, realizing coherent interactions between free-electron beams and solid-state quantum systems has remained out of reach, owing to their intrinsically weak coupling. Realizing such coherent control would open up opportunities for hybrid quantum platforms combining free electrons and solid-state qubits for coincident quantum information processing and nanoscale sensing. Here, we present a framework that employs negatively charged nitrogen-vacancy centers (NV-) in diamond as quantum sensors of a bunched electron beam. We develop a Lindblad master equation description of the magnetic free-electron--qubit interactions and identify spin relaxometry as a sensitive probe of the interaction. Experimentally, we integrate a confocal fluorescence microscopy setup into a microwave-bunched electron beam line. We monitor charge-state dynamics and assess their impact on key sensing performance metrics (such as spin readout contrast), defining safe operating parameters for quantum sensing experiments. By performing $T_1$ relaxometry under controlled electron beam exposure, we establish an upper bound on the free-electron--spin coupling strength. Our results establish NV- centers as quantitative probes of free electrons, providing a metrological benchmark for free-electron--qubit coupling under realistic conditions, and chart a route toward solid-state quantum control with electron beams.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2024

Subrelativistic Alternating Phase Focusing Dielectric Laser Accelerators

We demonstrate a silicon-based electron accelerator that uses laser optical near fields to both accelerate and confine electrons over extended distances. Two dielectric laser accelerator (DLA) designs were tested, each consisting of two arrays of silicon pillars pumped symmetrically by pulse front tilted laser beams, designed for average acceleration gradients 35 and 50 MeV/m respectively. The DLAs are designed to act as alternating phase focusing (APF) lattices, where electrons, depending on the electron-laser interaction phase, will alternate between opposing longitudinal and transverse focusing and defocusing forces. By incorporating fractional period drift sections that alter the synchronous phase between $\pm 60^\circ$ off crest, electrons captured in the designed acceleration bucket experience half the peak gradient as average gradient while also experiencing strong confinement forces that enable long interaction lengths. We demonstrate APF accelerators with interaction lengths up to 708 $μ$m and energy gains up to 23.7 $\pm$ 1.07 keV FWHM, a 25$\%$ increase from starting energy, demonstrating the ability to achieve substantial energy gains with subrelativistic DLA.

physics.acc-ph↗

arXiv2022

Ultra-bright Coherent Undulator Radiation Driven by Dielectric Laser Accelerator

A dielectric laser accelerator, operating at optical frequencies and GHz pulse rate, is expected to produce attosec electron bunches with a moderate beam current at high energy. For relativistic electrons, the attosec bunch has a spatial length of a few nanometers, which is well suited for generating high-brightness superradiance in the VUV, EUV, and x-ray spectra. Our study shows that the brilliance of coherent undulator radiation driven by a short-bunch beam with 1~10 fC bunch charge from a dielectric laser accelerator is comparable to or higher than that of a synchrotron in the 0.1 ~ 3 keV photon energy range, even though the beam power of the dielectric laser accelerator is about a million times lower than that of a synchrotron. When the brilliance under comparison is normalized to the electron beam power, the proposed coherent undulator radiation source becomes the brightest source on earth across the whole VUV, EUV, and soft x-ray spectrum.

physics.acc-ph↗

arXiv2022

High Gradient Silicon Carbide Immersion Lens Ultrafast Electron Sources

We present two compact ultrafast electron injector designs with integrated focusing that provide high peak brightness of up to $1.9*10^{12} A/m^2Sr^2$ with 10s of electrons per laser pulse using silicon carbide electrodes and silicon nanotip emitters. We demonstrate a few centimeter scale 96 keV immersion lens electron source and a 57 keV immersion lens electron source with a 19 kV/mm average acceleration gradient, nearly double the typical 10 kV/mm used in DC electron sources. The brightness of the electron sources is measured alongside start-to-end simulations including space charge effects. These sources are suitable for dielectric laser accelerator experiments, ultrafast electron diffraction, and other applications where a compact high brightness electron source is required.

physics.acc-ph↗

arXiv2021

Electron Pulse Compression with Optical Beat Note

Compressing electron pulses is important in many applications of electron beam systems. In this study, we propose to use optical beat notes to compress electron pulses. The beat frequency is chosen to match the initial electron pulse duration, which enables the compression of electron pulses with a wide range of durations. This functionality extends the optical control of electron beams, which is important in compact electron beam systems such as dielectric laser accelerators. We also find that the dominant frequency of the electron charge density changes continuously along its drift trajectory, which may open up new opportunities in coherent interaction between free electrons and quantum or classical systems.

physics.acc-ph↗

arXiv2020

Low Energy Spread Attosecond Bunching and Coherent Electron Acceleration in Dielectric Nanostructures

We demonstrate a compact technique to compress electron pulses to attosecond length, while keeping the energy spread reasonably small. The technique is based on Dielectric Laser Acceleration (DLA) in nanophotonic silicon structures. Unlike previous ballistic optical microbunching demonstrations, we use a modulator-demodulator scheme to compress phase space in the time and energy coordinates. With a second stage, we show that these pulses can be coherently accelerated, producing a net energy gain of $1.5\pm0.1$ keV, which is significantly larger than the remaining energy spread of $0.88 \,_{-0.2}^{+0.0}$ keV FWHM. We show that by linearly sweeping the phase between the two stages, the energy spectrum can be coherently moved in a periodic manner, while keeping the energy spread roughly constant. After leaving the buncher, the electron pulse is also transversely focused, and can be matched into a following accelerator lattice. Thus, this setup is the prototype injector into a scalable DLA based on Alternating Phase Focusing (APF).

physics.acc-ph↗

arXiv2020

Design of a multi-channel photonic crystal dielectric laser accelerator

To be useful for most scientific and medical applications, compact particle accelerators will require much higher average current than enabled by current architectures. For this purpose, we propose a photonic crystal architecture for a dielectric laser accelerator, referred to as a multi-input multi-output silicon accelerator (MIMOSA), that enables simultaneous acceleration of multiple electron beams, increasing the total electron throughput by at least one order of magnitude. To achieve this, we show that the photonic crystal must support a mode at the $Γ$ point in reciprocal space, with a normalized frequency equal to the normalized speed of the phase matched electron. We show that the figure of merit of the MIMOSA can be inferred from the eigenmodes of the corresponding infinitely periodic structure, which provides a powerful approach to design such devices. Additionally, we extend the MIMOSA architecture to electron deflectors and other electron manipulation functionalities. These additional functionalities, combined with the increased electron throughput of these devices, permit all-optical on-chip manipulation of electron beams in a fully integrated architecture compatible with current fabrication technologies, which opens the way to unconventional electron beam shaping, imaging, and radiation generation.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2019

MFB: A Mid-Frequency-Band Space Gravitational Wave Observer for the 2020 Decade

We make the case for the early development of a Mid-Frequency-Band (MFB) gravitational wave (GW) observatory in geosynchronous orbit (73,000 km arm), optimized for the frequency band 10 mHz to 1 Hz. MFB bridges the science acquisition frequencies between the ground observatories LIGO/VIRGO (4/3 km arm - as well as future planned ones 10/40 km arm), and the milli-hertz band of LISA (2.5 Gm arm)- with usable sensitivity extending to 10 Hz. We argue that this band will enable the timely development of this game-changing field of astrophysics, with observations of medium mass Binary Black Holes (BBH) and Binary Neutron Stars (BNS) sources prior to their mergers in the LIGO frequency range as well as Extreme Mass Ratio Inspirals (EMRI)s and mergers of supermassive BBH within the main detection band. MFB is better placed than LISA to access this exciting frequency region.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2019

On-chip integrated laser-driven particle accelerator

Particle accelerators represent an indispensable tool in science and industry. However, the size and cost of conventional radio-frequency accelerators limit the utility and reach of this technology. Dielectric laser accelerators (DLAs) provide a compact and cost-effective solution to this problem by driving accelerator nanostructures with visible or near-infrared (NIR) pulsed lasers, resulting in a 10$^4$ reduction of scale. Current implementations of DLAs rely on free-space lasers directly incident on the accelerating structures, limiting the scalability and integrability of this technology. Here we present the first experimental demonstration of a waveguide-integrated DLA, designed using a photonic inverse design approach. These on-chip devices accelerate sub-relativistic electrons of initial energy 83.4 keV by 1.21 keV over 30 um, providing peak acceleration gradients of 40.3 MeV/m. This progress represents a significant step towards a completely integrated MeV-scale dielectric laser accelerator.

physics.app-ph↗

arXiv2019

Experimental investigation of performance differences between Coherent Ising Machines and a quantum annealer

Physical annealing systems provide heuristic approaches to solving NP-hard Ising optimization problems. Here, we study the performance of two types of annealing machines--a commercially available quantum annealer built by D-Wave Systems, and measurement-feedback coherent Ising machines (CIMs) based on optical parametric oscillator networks--on two classes of problems, the Sherrington-Kirkpatrick (SK) model and MAX-CUT. The D-Wave quantum annealer outperforms the CIMs on MAX-CUT on regular graphs of degree 3. On denser problems, however, we observe an exponential penalty for the quantum annealer ($\exp(-α_\textrm{DW} N^2)$) relative to CIMs ($\exp(-α_\textrm{CIM} N)$) for fixed anneal times, on both the SK model and on 50%-edge-density MAX-CUT, where the coefficients $α_\textrm{CIM}$ and $α_\textrm{DW}$ are problem-class-dependent. On instances with over $50$ vertices, a several-orders-of-magnitude time-to-solution difference exists between CIMs and the D-Wave annealer. An optimal-annealing-time analysis is also consistent with a significant projected performance difference. The difference in performance between the sparsely connected D-Wave machine and the measurement-feedback facilitated all-to-all connectivity of the CIMs provides strong experimental support for efforts to increase the connectivity of quantum annealers.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2019

Laser-Driven Electron Lensing in Silicon Microstructures

We demonstrate a laser-driven, tunable electron lens fabricated in monolithic silicon. The lens consists of an array of silicon pillars pumped symmetrically by two 300 fs, 1.95 $μ$m wavelength, nJ-class laser pulses from an optical parametric amplifier. The optical near-field of the pillar structure focuses electrons in the plane perpendicular to the pillar axes. With 100 $\pm$ 10 MV/m incident laser fields, the lens focal length is measured to be 50 $\pm$ 4 $μ$m, which corresponds to an equivalent quadrupole focusing gradient $B'$ of 1.4 $\pm$ 0.1 MT/m. By varying the incident laser field strength, the lens can be tuned from a 21 $\pm$ 2 $μ$m focal length ($B'>3.3$ MT/m) to focal lengths on the cm-scale.

physics.acc-ph↗

arXiv2017

On-Chip Laser Power Delivery System for Dielectric Laser Accelerators

We propose an on-chip optical power delivery system for dielectric laser accelerators based on a fractal 'tree-branch' dielectric waveguide network. This system replaces experimentally demanding free-space manipulations of the driving laser beam with chip-integrated techniques based on precise nano-fabrication, enabling access to orders of magnitude increases in the interaction length and total energy gain for these miniature accelerators. Based on computational modeling, in the relativistic regime, our laser delivery system is estimated to provide 21 keV of energy gain over an acceleration length of 192 um with a single laser input, corresponding to a 108 MV/m acceleration gradient. The system may achieve 1 MeV of energy gain over a distance less than 1 cm by sequentially illuminating 49 identical structures. These findings are verified by detailed numerical simulation and modeling of the subcomponents and we provide a discussion of the main constraints, challenges, and relevant parameters in regards to on-chip laser coupling for dielectric laser accelerators.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2017

Design of racetrack ring resonator based dielectric laser accelerators

In this paper, we propose a novel design of dielectric laser-driven accelerator (DLA) utilizing evanescent electric field of racetrack ring resonator structures. Driven by laser light with the correctly designed optical phase window, sustained acceleration of electrons with controlled deflection is shown. Based on this design, we calculate an acceleration from 30 keV to 148.312 keV in 104.655 μm using a cascaded 11-stage racetrack ring resonators. This new idea poses a solution for on-chip integration of many DLA stages, while maintains high average accelerating gradients, providing a potential practical realization for "accelerator on a chip".

physics.optics↗

arXiv2016

A simple, picojoule-sensitive ultraviolet autocorrelator based on two-photon conductivity in sapphire

We present a simple autocorrelator for ultraviolet pulses based on two-photon conductivity in a bench-top fabricatable sapphire sensor. We perform measurements on femtosecond 226 - 278 nm ultraviolet pulses from the third and fourth harmonics of a standard 76 MHz titanium sapphire oscillator and picosecond 266 nm pulses from the fourth harmonic of a 1064 nm 50 MHz neodymium vanadate oscillator. Our device is sensitive to 2.6 pJ ultraviolet pulses with peak powers below 20 W. These results represent the lowest measured autocorrelation peak powers by over one order of magnitude for a system with no reference pulse in the deep ultraviolet ( < 300 nm). The autocorrelator can potentially support UV pulse lengths from 50 fs - 10's of picoseconds.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2016

Transverse and longitudinal characterization of electron beams using interaction with optical near-fields

We demonstrate an experimental technique for both transverse and longitudinal characterization of bunched femtosecond free electron beams. The operation principle is based on monitoring of the current of electrons that obtained an energy gain during the interaction with the synchronized optical near-field wave excited by femtosecond laser pulses. The synchronous accelerating/decelerating fields confined to the surface of a silicon nanostructure are characterized using a highly focused sub-relativistic electron beam. Here the transverse spatial resolution of 450 nm and femtosecond temporal resolution achievable by this technique are demonstrated.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2016

Elements of a dielectric laser accelerator

The widespread use of high energy particle beams in basic research, medicine and coherent X-ray generation coupled with the large size of modern radio frequency (RF) accelerator devices and facilities has motivated a strong need for alternative accelerators operating in regimes outside of RF. Working at optical frequencies, dielectric laser accelerators (DLAs) - transparent laser-driven nanoscale dielectric structures whose near fields can synchronously accelerate charged particles - have demonstrated high-gradient acceleration with a variety of laser wavelengths, materials, and electron beam parameters, potentially enabling miniaturized accelerators and table-top coherent x-ray sources. To realize a useful (i.e. scalable) DLA, crucial developments have remained: concatenation of components including sustained phase synchronicity to reach arbitrary final energies as well as deflection and focusing elements to keep the beam well collimated along the design axis. Here, all of these elements are demonstrated with a subrelativistic electron beam. In particular, by creating two interaction regions via illumination of a nanograting with two spatio-temporally separated pulsed laser beams, we demonstrate a phase-controlled doubling of electron energy gain from 0.7 to 1.4 keV (2.5 percent to 5 percent of the initial beam energy) and through use of a chirped grating geometry, we overcome the dephasing limit of 25 keV electrons, increasing their energy gains to a laser power limited 10 percent of their initial energy. Further, optically-driven transverse focusing of the electron beam with focal lengths below 200 microns is achieved via a parabolic grating geometry. These results lay the cornerstone for future miniaturized phase synchronous vacuum-structure-based accelerators.

physics.acc-ph↗

arXiv2016

The Design of a Drag-Free CubeSat and the Housing for its Gravitational Reference Sensor

A Drag-Free CubeSat mission has been proposed to demonstrate the feasibility of a Gravitational Reference Sensor (GRS) with an optical readout for a 3 units (3U) spacecraft. A purely drag-free object is defined by the absence of all external forces other than gravity, which are shielded by the spacecraft. In a real case, the TM will still be affected by disturbances. Several of them are passively reduced by the design of the TM housing. This system is a thick-walled aluminium box that holds the shadow sensors and shields the TM. The housing has an effect on the mechanical, thermal and magnetic environment around the TM. All of them have been analysed. The mechanical vibrations have to fit the launch environment and the modes have to be outside of the measurement range (0.0001 - 1 Hz). The magnetic field has to be reduced by a 0.01 factor. The temperature difference between internal opposing surfaces, determining pressure on the TM, has to be below 10^-3(1 mHz/f)1/3 K Hz^-1/2. The housing, together with the TM, the sensors and the UV LEDs for charging control, constitutes the GRS, which would then fit into a 1U. The other 2Us are occupied by the caging mechanism that constraints the TM during launch, the thrusters, the Attitude Determination And Control System (ADACS) and the electronics. The Drag-Free CubeSat will be the result of the combined efforts of Stanford, University of Florida, KACST and NASA and will be the first drag-free mission with an optical readout and the first GRS designed within the limits of a 3U small satellite. In the first section, this paper briefly updates on the main characteristics and systems of the project. Particular emphasis is then given to the recently designed housing, its expected performance and the open issues.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2015

Optical gating and streaking of free-electrons with attosecond precision

In this paper we present proof of principle experiments of an optical gating concept for free electrons. We demonstrate a temporal resolution of 1.2+-0.3 fs via energy and transverse momentum modulation as a function of time. The scheme is based on the synchronous interaction between electrons and the near-field mode of a dielectric nano-grating excited by a femtosecond laser pulse with an optical period duration of 6.5 fs. The sub-optical cycle resolution demonstrated here is promising for use in laser-driven streak cameras for attosecond temporal characterization of bunched particle beams as well as time-resolved experiments with free-electron beams. We expect that 10 as temporal resolution will be achieved in the near future using such a scheme.

physics.optics↗