Conventional particle accelerators are typically big machines that occupy a lot of space. Even at more modest energies, such as that used for cancer therapy and medical imaging, accelerators need large rooms to accommodate the required hardware, power supplies and radiation shielding.
A new discovery by physicists at the University of Maryland could hold the key to the construction of inexpensive, broadly useful, and portable particle accelerators in the very near future. The team has accelerated electron beams to nearly the speed of light using record-low laser energies, thus relieving a major engineering bottleneck in the development of compact particle accelerators.
"We have accelerated high-charge electron beams to more than 10 million electron volts using only millijoules of laser pulse energy. This is the energy consumed by a typical household lightbulb in one-thousandth of a second." said Howard Milchberg, professor of Physics and Electrical and Computer Engineering at UMD and senior author of the study. "Because the laser energy requirement is so low, our result opens the way for laser-driven particle accelerators that can be moved around on a cart."
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CAPTION- This schematic illustrates the laser-driven electron accelerator experiment at the University of Maryland. The three images at the top directly depict three key phases of the process. At left, a laser pulse is directed into a dense jet of hydrogen gas, where it ionizes the gas to form a plasma and initiates an effect called relativistic self-focusing. (See left inset.) Electrons within the plasma are rapidly accelerated to nearly the speed of light, which produces a brief, intense flash of visible light. (See middle inset.) The accelerated ultra-short bunch of electrons continues to gain energy and then exits the plasma, where it produces intense radiation that can be used for ultra-fast, high-energy imaging applications. (See right inset) CREDIT Howard Milchberg/George Hine
Physical Review Letters - Multi-MeV Electron Acceleration by Subterawatt Laser Pulses
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A new discovery by physicists at the University of Maryland could hold the key to the construction of inexpensive, broadly useful, and portable particle accelerators in the very near future. The team has accelerated electron beams to nearly the speed of light using record-low laser energies, thus relieving a major engineering bottleneck in the development of compact particle accelerators.
"We have accelerated high-charge electron beams to more than 10 million electron volts using only millijoules of laser pulse energy. This is the energy consumed by a typical household lightbulb in one-thousandth of a second." said Howard Milchberg, professor of Physics and Electrical and Computer Engineering at UMD and senior author of the study. "Because the laser energy requirement is so low, our result opens the way for laser-driven particle accelerators that can be moved around on a cart."
CAPTION- This schematic illustrates the laser-driven electron accelerator experiment at the University of Maryland. The three images at the top directly depict three key phases of the process. At left, a laser pulse is directed into a dense jet of hydrogen gas, where it ionizes the gas to form a plasma and initiates an effect called relativistic self-focusing. (See left inset.) Electrons within the plasma are rapidly accelerated to nearly the speed of light, which produces a brief, intense flash of visible light. (See middle inset.) The accelerated ultra-short bunch of electrons continues to gain energy and then exits the plasma, where it produces intense radiation that can be used for ultra-fast, high-energy imaging applications. (See right inset) CREDIT Howard Milchberg/George Hine
Physical Review Letters - Multi-MeV Electron Acceleration by Subterawatt Laser Pulses
Read more »
