On the role of terahertz field acceleration and beaming of surface plasmon generated ultrashort electron pulses

A mechanism for control of the energy and pitch angle of surface plasmon accelerated electron pulses is proposed. Electrons generated via multi-photon absorption in a silver film on a glass prism are ponderomotively accelerated in the surface plasmon field excited by a 30 fs, 800 nm optical pulse. Through introduction of a single-cycle terahertz (THz) pulse, the energy spectrum and trajectory of the generated electron pulse can be controlled via the THz field strength. Generated electron pulses achieve peak kinetic energies up to 1.56 keV, while utilizing an incident optical field strength five times less than comparable plasmon accelerated electron pulses. These results demonstrate that THz pulses can be utilized to achieve tunable, high energy, trajectory controlled electron pulses necessary for various applications that require ultrafast electron pulse manipulation. (C) 2014 AIP Publishing LLC.