An interdisciplinary team of researchers has built the first prototype of a miniature particle accelerator that uses terahertz radiation instead of radio frequency structures. A single accelerator module is no more than 1.5 centimetres long and one millimetre thick. The terahertz technology holds the promise of miniaturising the entire set-up by at least a factor of 100, as the scientists surrounding DESY’s Franz Kärtner from the Center for Free-Electron Laser Science (CFEL) point out. They are presenting their prototype, that was set up in Kärtner's lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the U.S., in the journal Nature Communications. The authors see numerous applications for terahertz accelerators, in materials science, medicine and particle physics, as well as in building X-ray lasers
In the electromagnetic spectrum, terahertz radiation lies between infrared radiation and microwaves. Particle accelerators usually rely on electromagnetic radiation from the radio frequency range; DESY’s particle accelerator PETRA III, for example, uses a frequency of around 500 megahertz. The wavelength of the terahertz radiation used in this experiment is around one thousand times shorter. “The advantage is that everything else can be a thousand times smaller too,” explains Kärtner, who is also a professor at the University of Hamburg and at MIT, as well as being a member of the Hamburg Centre for Ultrafast Imaging (CUI), one of Germany’s Clusters of Excellence.
The proof-of-principle prototype and verified that a single module was able to increase electron energy levels by 7 keV. According to the scientists, this figure could eventually soar up to 10 MeV, over 10 times more than what the best (and largest) modules can do today. The current goal is to produce a compact 20 MeV accelerator. They hope to have that problem solved in two-three years. There is of course the potential to build high energy machines of the scale of SLAC at reduced cost in the future
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Terahertz accelerator modules easily fit into two fingers. Credit: DESY/Heiner Müller-Elsner
Nature Communications - Terahertz-driven linear electron acceleration
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In the electromagnetic spectrum, terahertz radiation lies between infrared radiation and microwaves. Particle accelerators usually rely on electromagnetic radiation from the radio frequency range; DESY’s particle accelerator PETRA III, for example, uses a frequency of around 500 megahertz. The wavelength of the terahertz radiation used in this experiment is around one thousand times shorter. “The advantage is that everything else can be a thousand times smaller too,” explains Kärtner, who is also a professor at the University of Hamburg and at MIT, as well as being a member of the Hamburg Centre for Ultrafast Imaging (CUI), one of Germany’s Clusters of Excellence.
The proof-of-principle prototype and verified that a single module was able to increase electron energy levels by 7 keV. According to the scientists, this figure could eventually soar up to 10 MeV, over 10 times more than what the best (and largest) modules can do today. The current goal is to produce a compact 20 MeV accelerator. They hope to have that problem solved in two-three years. There is of course the potential to build high energy machines of the scale of SLAC at reduced cost in the future
Terahertz accelerator modules easily fit into two fingers. Credit: DESY/Heiner Müller-Elsner
Nature Communications - Terahertz-driven linear electron acceleration
Read more »
