Advanced Accelerating Structures Based on Metamaterials

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This award will fund theoretical and experimental efforts on critical issues related to developing a new class of advanced particle accelerators based on exotic new materials: metamaterials of photonic matter. Metamaterials are artificial materials usually assembled from conventional microscopic materials. Photonic matter in this context is a new state of matter in which photons interact with each other, usually through mutual interactions with ordinary atoms. The metamaterials of photonic matter in this award will be used to advance techniques in particle accelerators. By taking advantage of highly unusual propagation properties of high-frequency electromagnetic waves in metamaterials, this award will develop both beam-driven (two-beam) and wave-driven accelerators utilizing highly unorthodox propagation geometries that will ultimately lead to developing high frequency switched matrix accelerators capable of overcoming the most severe challenge to high gradient acceleration: the breakdown of the accelerating structuresThis research brings together two areas of science: electromagnetics/metamaterials and accelerators. Graduate students will be involved in all stages of this project. Significant outreach effort to high school, undergraduate, and graduate Hispanic students in Texas is planned. High school students from local schools will conduct summer research in the PI's laboratories, collaborate with graduate students, and receive mentorship from the recently established Mentorship Networks among minority students in the San Antonio/Austin area aimed at enhancing the interest and awareness of nanoscale science among minority students. The Mentorship Network has been established through the NSF's Nanotechnology Interdisciplinary Research Team (NIRT) grant to UT-San Antonio/UT-Austin. One of the supported graduate students will have the opportunity to spend considerable time at Argonne National Laboratory and at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory's Facility for Advanced Accelerator Experimental Tests (FACET) facility testing these novel accelerating structures using short ultra-relativistic beams.The intellectual focus of this work is the design, fabrication, and experimentally testing accelerating structures that support luminous electromagnetic waves capable of strongly interacting with ultra-relativistic electron beams. The award will also be used to investigate the possibility of utilizing the recently invented Photonic Topological Insulators (PTIs) based on metamaterials as novel accelerating structures. All accelerating structures will be tested at facilities at Argonne National Laboratory and at SLAC, with particular emphasis on structural breakdown at high accelerating gradients and on techniques needed for short wavelength operation.