2023-11-29 11:55:14
MADRID, 29 Nov. (EUROPA PRESS) –
A compact particle accelerator less than 20 meters long has been able to reach energies so high that only two other facilities reach them, but both three kilometers long.
Researchers from the University of Texas (UT) at Austin, several national laboratories, European universities and the company TAU Systems Inc. have developed the new device, which produces a beam of electrons with an energy of 10 billion electron volts (10 GeV).
Particle accelerators have great potential for semiconductor applications, medical imaging and therapies, and research in materials, energy and medicine. But conventional accelerators require a lot of space (kilometers), which makes them more expensive and limits their presence to a handful of national laboratories and universities.
“Now we can achieve those energies in 10 centimeters,” he said it’s a statement Bjorn ‘Manuel’ Hegelich, associate professor of physics at UT and CEO of TAU Systems, referring to the size of the chamber where the beam was produced. He is the lead author of a recent article describing his achievements in the magazine Matter and Radiation at Extremes.
Hegelich and his team are currently exploring the use of their accelerator, called the Wakefield Advanced Laser Accelerator, for various purposes. They hope to use it to test how space electronics can resist radiation, to image the 3D internal structures of new semiconductor chip designs, and even to develop new cancer therapies and advanced medical imaging techniques.
This type of accelerator could also be used to power another device called an X-ray free electron laser, which could take slow-motion movies of processes at the atomic or molecular scale. Examples of such processes include drug interactions with cells, changes within batteries that could cause them to catch fire, chemical reactions within solar panels, and viral proteins that change shape upon infecting cells.
The concept of Wakefield laser accelerators was first described in 1979. An extremely powerful laser impacts helium gas, heating it into plasma and creating waves that eject electrons from the gas in a high-energy electron beam.
Over the past two decades, several research groups have developed more powerful versions. Hegelich and his team’s key breakthrough is based on nanoparticles. An auxiliary laser hits a metal plate inside the gas cell, which injects a stream of metal nanoparticles that increase the energy delivered to the electrons by the waves.
The laser is like a boat sailing across a lake, leaving a wake, and the electrons travel in this plasma wave like surfers.
For this experiment, the researchers used one of the most powerful pulsed lasers in the world, the Texas Petawatt Laser, which is located at UT and fires an ultra-intense pulse of light every hour.
A single petawatt laser pulse contains approximately 1,000 times the electrical energy installed in the US, but lasts only 150 femtoseconds, less than one billionth of the duration of a lightning strike.
The team’s long-term goal is to boost their system with a laser they are currently developing that fits on a table and can fire thousands of times per second, making the entire accelerator much more compact. and usable in much larger environments than conventional accelerators.
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