Acceleration of particles in photonic nanostructures fabricated using semiconductor manufacturing techniques and driven by ultrafast solid state lasers is a new and promising approach to developing future generations of compact particle accelerators. Substantial progress has been made in this area in recent years, fueled by a growing international collaboration of universities, national laboratories, and companies. Performance of these micro-accelerator devices is ultimately limited by laser-induced material breakdown limits, which can be substantially higher for optically driven dielectrics than for radio-frequency metallic cavities traditionally used in modern particle accelerators, allowing for 1 to 2 order of magnitude increase in achievable accelerating fields. The lasers required for this approach are commercially available with moderate (micro-Joule class) pulse energies and repetition rates in the MHz regime. We summarize recent experimental progress and potential near-term applications and offshoot technologies.
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