First Acceleration in a Resonant Optical-Scale Laser-Powered Structure

The Micro-Accelerator Platform (MAP), an optical-scale dielectric laser accelerator (DLA) based on a planar resonant structure that was developed at UCLA, has been tested experimentally. Successful acceleration was observed after a series of experimental runs at SLAC’s NLCTA facility, in which the input laser power was well below the predicted breakdown limit. Though acceleration gradients were modest (<50 MeV/m), these are the first proof-of-principle results for a resonant DLA structure. We present more detailed results and some implications for future work.