Enhancing spoof surface-plasmons with gradient metasurfaces.
The coupling between surface plasmons and free electrons may be used to amplify waves or accelerate particles. Nonetheless, such an interaction is usually weak due to the small interaction length or velocity mismatching. Here a mechanism for enhancing the coupling between plasmonic fields and relativistic electrons is proposed. By using a weakly gradient meta-surface that supports the spoof surface-plasmons (SSP), the phase velocity of SSP mode can be manipulated and quasi-velocity-matching between SSP and electrons may be achieved. The dynamic coupling equations suggest that, due to the strong coupling, the energy can be extracted continuously from the relativistic electrons. The sustained increase of SSP in a narrow frequency band has been demonstrated by the particle-in-cell simulations, where the output power of SSP attains 65 W at 1 THz (with 28 mm interaction length) and the coupling efficiency is enhanced by two orders of magnitude. The results may find potential applications for designing new compact and efficient THz wave sources.
School of Electronics Engineering and Computer Science, Peking University, Beijing 100871, P.R. China.
Ling-Bao
LB
Kong
Department of Applied Physics, Nanjing Tech University, Nanjing 210009, P.R. China.
Cheng-Ping
CP
Huang
School of Electronics Engineering and Computer Science, Peking University, Beijing 100871, P.R. China.
Chao-Hai
CH
Du
School of Electronics Engineering and Computer Science, Peking University, Beijing 100871, P.R. China.
Pu-Kun
PK
Liu
College of Science, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing 210016, P.R. China.
Xiao-Gang
XG
Yin