Free-electron–light interactions in nanophotonics
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011303_1_online.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
4.84 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
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Author(s)
Roques-Carmes, Charles
Kooi, Steven E
Yang, Yi
Rivera, Nicholas
Keathley, Phillip D
Joannopoulos, John D
Johnson, Steven G
Kaminer, Ido
Berggren, Karl K
Soljačić, Marin
Date Issued
January 18, 2023
Journal
Applied Physics Reviews
Publisher
AIP Publishing
Citation
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. Appl. Phys. Rev. 1 March 2023; 10 (1): 011303.
Version
Final published version
Abstract
When impinging on optical structures or passing in their vicinity, free electrons can spontaneously emit electromagnetic radiation, a phenomenon generally known as cathodoluminescence. Free-electron radiation comes in many guises: Cherenkov, transition, and Smith–Purcell radiation, but also electron scintillation, commonly referred to as incoherent cathodoluminescence. While those effects have been at the heart of many fundamental discoveries and technological developments in high-energy physics in the past century, their recent demonstration in photonic and nanophotonic systems has attracted a great deal of attention. Those developments arose from predictions that exploit nanophotonics for novel radiation regimes, now becoming accessible thanks to advances in nanofabrication. In general, the proper design of nanophotonic structures can enable shaping, control, and enhancement of free-electron radiation, for any of the above-mentioned effects. Free-electron radiation in nanophotonics opens the way to promising applications, such as widely tunable integrated light sources from x-ray to THz frequencies, miniaturized particle accelerators, and highly sensitive high-energy particle detectors. Here, we review the emerging field of free-electron radiation in nanophotonics. We first present a general, unified framework to describe free-electron light–matter interaction in arbitrary nanophotonic systems. We then show how this framework sheds light on the physical underpinnings of many methods in the field used to control and enhance free-electron radiation. Namely, the framework points to the central role played by the photonic eigenmodes in controlling the output properties of free-electron radiation (e.g., frequency, directionality, and polarization). We then review experimental techniques to characterize free-electron radiation in scanning and transmission electron microscopes, which have emerged as the central platforms for experimental realization of the phenomena described in this review. We further discuss various experimental methods to control and extract spectral, angular, and polarization-resolved information on free-electron radiation. We conclude this review by outlining novel directions for this field, including ultrafast and quantum effects in free-electron radiation, tunable short-wavelength emitters in the ultraviolet and soft x-ray regimes, and free-electron radiation from topological states in photonic crystals.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Research Laboratory of Electronics
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mathematics
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Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0118096
