ACS Publications. Most Trusted. Most Cited. Most Read
Boosting the Efficiency of Smith–Purcell Radiators Using Nanophotonic Inverse Design
My Activity
    Article

    Boosting the Efficiency of Smith–Purcell Radiators Using Nanophotonic Inverse Design
    Click to copy article linkArticle link copied!

    Other Access OptionsSupporting Information (4)

    ACS Photonics

    Cite this: ACS Photonics 2022, 9, 2, 664–671
    Click to copy citationCitation copied!
    https://doi.org/10.1021/acsphotonics.1c01687
    Published January 21, 2022
    Copyright © 2022 American Chemical Society

    Abstract

    Click to copy section linkSection link copied!
    Abstract Image

    The generation of radiation from free electrons passing a grating, known as Smith–Purcell radiation, finds various applications, including nondestructive beam diagnostics and tunable light sources, ranging from terahertz toward X-rays. So far, the gratings used for this purpose have been designed manually, based on human intuition and simple geometric shapes. Here we apply the computer-based technique of nanophotonic inverse design to build a 1400 nm Smith–Purcell radiator for subrelativistic 30 keV electrons. We demonstrate that the resulting silicon nanostructure radiates with a 3× higher efficiency and 2.2× higher overall power than previously used rectangular gratings. With better fabrication accuracy and for the same electron–structure distance, simulations suggest a superiority by a factor of 96 in peak efficiency. While increasing the efficiency is a key step needed for practical applications of free-electron radiators, inverse design also allows to shape the spectral and spatial emission in ways inaccessible with the human mind.

    Copyright © 2022 American Chemical Society

    Read this article

    To access this article, please review the available access options below.

    Get instant access

    Purchase Access

    Read this article for 48 hours. Check out below using your ACS ID or as a guest.

    Recommended

    Access through Your Institution

    You may have access to this article through your institution.

    Your institution does not have access to this content. Add or change your institution or let them know you’d like them to include access.

    Supporting Information

    Click to copy section linkSection link copied!

    The Supporting Information is available free of charge at https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsphotonics.1c01687.

    • Dependence of radiation on electron beam height within the structure; Determination of effective current; Dependence on beam-grating distance (PDF)

    • 2D time-domain simulation of the inverse design structure (MP4)

    • 2D time-domain simulation of the dual pillar structure with DBR (MP4)

    • 2D time-domain simulation of the rectangular grating (MP4)

    Terms & Conditions

    Most electronic Supporting Information files are available without a subscription to ACS Web Editions. Such files may be downloaded by article for research use (if there is a public use license linked to the relevant article, that license may permit other uses). Permission may be obtained from ACS for other uses through requests via the RightsLink permission system: http://pubs.acs.org/page/copyright/permissions.html.

    Cited By

    Click to copy section linkSection link copied!
    Citation Statements
    Explore this article's citation statements on scite.ai

    This article is cited by 15 publications.

    1. Fabian Mooshammer, Xinyi Xu, Chiara Trovatello, Zhi Hao Peng, Birui Yang, Jacob Amontree, Shuai Zhang, James Hone, Cory R. Dean, P. James Schuck, D. N. Basov. Enabling Waveguide Optics in Rhombohedral-Stacked Transition Metal Dichalcogenides with Laser-Patterned Grating Couplers. ACS Nano 2024, 18 (5) , 4118-4130. https://doi.org/10.1021/acsnano.3c08522
    2. Natalie Shultz, Euan McLeod. Building blocks for nanophotonic devices and metamaterials. Chemical Communications 2025, 348 https://doi.org/10.1039/D4CC06236A
    3. Zhexin Zhao. Upper Bound for the Quantum Coupling between Free Electrons and Photons. Physical Review Letters 2025, 134 (4) https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.134.043804
    4. Xiang Xiong, Baohui Zhang, Ruwen Peng, Mu Wang. Simulation study of flexible wavefront shaping in Smith-Purcell radiation with aperiodic metagratings. Optics Express 2024, 32 (21) , 36381. https://doi.org/10.1364/OE.537527
    5. Suguo Chen, Pengtao Wang, Yue Wang, Sunchao Huang, Lei Hou. Investigation of the Abraham–Minkowski dilemma in Smith–Purcell radiation from photonic crystals. APL Photonics 2024, 9 (9) https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0218877
    6. Leon Brückner, Tomáš Chlouba, Yuya Morimoto, Norbert Schönenberger, Tatsunori Shibuya, Thomas Siefke, Uwe D. Zeitner, Peter Hommelhoff. Mid-infrared dielectric laser acceleration in a silicon dual pillar structure. Optics Express 2024, 32 (16) , 28348. https://doi.org/10.1364/OE.531071
    7. Zhaofu Chen, Luqin Shao, Leilei Mao, Renjun Yang, Xin Shi, Mengmeng Jin, Ningfeng Bai, Xiaohan Sun. Rigorous coupled-wave analysis of unilateral Smith–Purcell radiation from asymmetric resonators. Applied Optics 2024, 63 (3) , 708. https://doi.org/10.1364/AO.514085
    8. Tal Fishman, Urs Haeusler, Raphael Dahan, Michael Yannai, Yuval Adiv, Tom Lenkiewicz Abudi, Roy Shiloh, Ori Eyal, Peyman Yousefi, Gadi Eisenstein, Peter Hommelhoff, Ido Kaminer. Imaging the field inside nanophotonic accelerators. Nature Communications 2023, 14 (1) https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-38857-z
    9. Shengyuan Lu, Ayan Nussupbekov, Xiao Xiong, Wen Jun Ding, Ching Eng Png, Zi‐En Ooi, Jing Hua Teng, Liang Jie Wong, Yidong Chong, Lin Wu. Smith–Purcell Radiation from Highly Mobile Carriers in 2D Quantum Materials. Laser & Photonics Reviews 2023, 17 (7) https://doi.org/10.1002/lpor.202300002
    10. Niclas Westerberg, Robert Bennett. Perturbative light–matter interactions; from first principles to inverse design. Physics Reports 2023, 1026 , 1-63. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physrep.2023.07.005
    11. Ping Zhang, Jing Shu, Yin Dong, Shuhe Zhang, Xinxin Cao, Xiaosong Wang, Shengpeng Yang, Bingyang Liang, Yuan Zheng, Shaomeng Wang, Yubin Gong. Smith–Purcell radiation controlled by the transmission characteristics and quality factor of a layer. Journal of Applied Physics 2023, 133 (22) https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0147489
    12. Yihao Xu, Bo Xiong, Wei Ma, Yongmin Liu. Software-defined nanophotonic devices and systems empowered by machine learning. Progress in Quantum Electronics 2023, 89 , 100469. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pquantelec.2023.100469
    13. Sunchao Huang, Ruihuan Duan, Nikhil Pramanik, Jason Scott Herrin, Chris Boothroyd, Zheng Liu, Liang Jie Wong. Quantum recoil in free-electron interactions with atomic lattices. Nature Photonics 2023, 17 (3) , 224-230. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-022-01132-6
    14. Charles Roques-Carmes, Steven E. Kooi, Yi Yang, Nicholas Rivera, Phillip D. Keathley, John D. Joannopoulos, Steven G. Johnson, Ido Kaminer, Karl K. Berggren, Marin Soljačić. Free-electron–light interactions in nanophotonics. Applied Physics Reviews 2023, 10 (1) https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0118096
    15. Yi Yang, Charles Roques-Carmes, Steven E. Kooi, Haoning Tang, Justin Beroz, Eric Mazur, Ido Kaminer, John D. Joannopoulos, Marin Soljačić. Photonic flatband resonances for free-electron radiation. Nature 2023, 613 (7942) , 42-47. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-05387-5

    ACS Photonics

    Cite this: ACS Photonics 2022, 9, 2, 664–671
    Click to copy citationCitation copied!
    https://doi.org/10.1021/acsphotonics.1c01687
    Published January 21, 2022
    Copyright © 2022 American Chemical Society

    Article Views

    1014

    Altmetric

    -

    Citations

    Learn about these metrics

    Article Views are the COUNTER-compliant sum of full text article downloads since November 2008 (both PDF and HTML) across all institutions and individuals. These metrics are regularly updated to reflect usage leading up to the last few days.

    Citations are the number of other articles citing this article, calculated by Crossref and updated daily. Find more information about Crossref citation counts.

    The Altmetric Attention Score is a quantitative measure of the attention that a research article has received online. Clicking on the donut icon will load a page at altmetric.com with additional details about the score and the social media presence for the given article. Find more information on the Altmetric Attention Score and how the score is calculated.