Laser Wakefield Particle Accelerator Realized

deglr6328 writes "Researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab's "l'OASIS" group have, for the first time, discovered a way to create high quality monochromatic beams of relativistic electrons using a 10 terawatt laser pulse focused on a specially formed plasma channel. The work is considered a landmark in new accelerator physics due to the fact that they are theoretically capable of creating extraordinarily high field accelerating gradients in the 100's of GeV per meter range; much higher than what's possible with the current gradients created by microwave frequency accelerators. The discovery could therefore open the door to far more efficient and compact staged particle accelerators utilizing next generation petawatt power lasers to achieve TeV scale particle energies and at lower energies, allow things like proton beam cancer therapy to be made affordable and widely available."

Comments

Re:This is a breakthrought!

[Christopher Thomas]

Compact accelerators could be a huge, paradign shifting win for fusion power.

Um, no. Like most particle accelerators, these are horribly inefficient. There are far better ways to dump energy into fusion plasma or frozen pellets than this, even for the particle-beam ICF schemes.

You're using an extremely inefficient chirped-pulse T3 laser to drive an extremely inefficient (but very compact!) particle accelerator.

(Yes, I know IHBT again...)

Re:Petawatt power lasers ...

[j0n4th4nb34r]

"My understanding was that it was plasma temperature and density that mattered, which depends only on the energy deposited and how symmetrical you can get the pellet implosion...."

You are correct as far as I know, but as Stephen correctly pointed out I was talking about fission. In the US a project which might be called something like the national combustion lab, and uses 192 similar (but less powerful) high powered lasers, to initiate fusion.