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

TL;DR

This paper proposes a universal method for accelerating massive particles on a photonic chip using spatial-temporal modulation of potential, enabling MeV-scale acceleration and potential atom trapping applications.

Contribution

It generalizes spectral manipulation techniques from photons to massive particles, introducing a novel approach for particle acceleration on integrated photonic platforms.

Findings

Proposes a MeV-magnitude acceleration mechanism on a photonic chip.

Suggests potential for atom trapping and microscale particle manipulation.

Demonstrates the universality of the spatial-temporal modulation approach.

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.