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Particle accelerators are extremely important in the study of matter in the Universe, but the ones we think of tend to be gigantic instruments – surrounding cities in some cases. Now scientists have created a much smaller version to power an advanced laser, a setup that could be just as useful as its larger counterparts.
The particle accelerator in question is a plasma wake field accelerator, which generates short, intense bursts of electrons, and the laser it powers is what is called a free electron laser (FEL), which uses its light to analyze atoms, molecules and condensed particles. material in incredibly high resolutions.
Although this scenario has been tried before, the resulting laser light was not intense enough to be useful on a smaller scale. Here, the researchers were able to keep the facility enclosed in a few full-sized rooms while amplifying the final electron beam produced by the laser, increasing the intensity 100-fold in the last step of the process.
“We have proved the feasibility of the new technical way with the laser electron accelerator with ultra-high acceleration capability, and it has reduced the size of the facility from the kilometer level to 12 meters,” said physicist Leng Yuxin of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).
The team had to overcome various challenges to scale down the technology while keeping it practically useful. They had to reduce the variation in electron energy to just 0.5%, for example, which required a series of optimizations that controlled the acceleration of the electrons and ensured smooth travel.
The electrons are pulled through a vacuum pipe and through a series of three magnetized inverters, which use their magnetic fields to shake the electrons and produce light. The emitted light repels the electrons, pushing them into smaller groups which then generate the laser beam.
The increased electric field across the inverters while maintaining stability is one of the reasons the setup was able to be made as compact as it was. This means that many of the advantages of particle accelerators can be applied in experiments conducted in one room.
“The characteristics of the FEL, including its very high resolution rates in terms of time and space and very high peak brightness, allow three-dimensional and multimodal imaging of materials to be performed with ultra-high precision,” explains the physicist Wang Wentao, from CAS.
Not only is the new setup smaller than your standard particle accelerator and FEL setup, it’s also much more affordable, which opens up all kinds of potential new applications, even if the device isn’t as powerful as the ones. large-scale versions.
In fact, preparing the new particle accelerator and its FEL for practical laboratory experiments is going to take a lot more time and a lot more research, but scientists have shown what is possible in terms of downscaling the whole. of the system.
And while some questions remain about how the small accelerator and laser will match the results we’re already getting from larger versions, other experts were quick to praise the new research on what it came to. do. Many new and exciting discoveries could be on the way.
“The application of potential technology is likely to greatly expand human understanding of the mystery of life and the revolution of living beings,” Wentao said.
The research was published in Nature.
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