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  • Open Access

On-Chip Laser-Driven Free-Electron Spin Polarizer

Clarisse Woodahl*, Melanie Murillo, Charles Roques-Carmes, Aviv Karnieli, David A. B. Miller, and Olav Solgaard

  • *Contact author: cwoodahl@stanford.com
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Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 063802 – Published 12 February, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/3c1m-d3hh

Abstract

Spin-polarized electron beam sources enable studies of spin-dependent electric and magnetic effects at the nanoscale. We propose a method of creating spin-polarized electrons on an integrated photonics chip by laser-driven nanophotonic fields. A two-stage interaction separated by a free-space drift length is proposed, where the first stage and drift length introduces spin-dependent characteristics into the probability distribution of the electron wave function. The second stage uses an adjusted optical near field to rotate the spin states utilizing the spin-dependent wave-packet distribution to produce electrons with high ensemble average spin expectation values. This platform provides an integrated and compact method to generate spin-polarized electrons, implementable with millimeter scale chips and tabletop lasers.

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Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 063802– Published 12 February, 2026
  • Received 23 July 2025
  • Accepted 9 January 2026
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI.

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