On-Chip Laser-Driven Free-Electron Spin Polarizer

TL;DR

This paper proposes an integrated photonics chip method to generate highly spin-polarized electrons using laser-driven nanophotonic fields, enabling compact and scalable spin-polarized electron sources for nanoscale studies.

Contribution

It introduces a novel two-stage laser-driven interaction scheme on a chip to produce spin-polarized electrons, combining nanophotonics and free-space drift for enhanced control.

Findings

Demonstrates a feasible design for on-chip spin polarization.

Achieves high ensemble average spin expectation values.

Provides a compact, scalable platform for spin-polarized electron generation.

Abstract

Spin-polarized electron beam sources enable studies of spin-dependent electric and magnetic effects at the nanoscale. We propose a method of creating spin-polarized electrons on an integrated photonics chip by laser driven nanophotonic fields. A two-stage interaction separated by a free space drift length is proposed, where the first stage and drift length introduces spin-dependent characteristics into the probability distribution of the electron wavefunction. The second stage uses an adjusted optical near-field to rotate the spin states utilizing the spin-dependent wavepacket distribution to produce electrons with high ensemble average spin expectation values. This platform provides an integrated and compact method to generate spin-polarized electrons, implementable with millimeter scale chips and table-top lasers.