Scientists achieve first ever acceleration of electrons in plasma waves

Researchers have demonstrated a new technique for accelerating electrons to very high energies over short distances.

more…

Tau.Neutrino said:

Scientists achieve first ever acceleration of electrons in plasma waves

Researchers have demonstrated a new technique for accelerating electrons to very high energies over short distances.

more…

From link.

> making high-energy accelerators more affordable is urgently needed. Typically, particle physics experiments use oscillating electric fields, called radiofrequency cavities, and high-powered magnets to accelerate particles to high energies. But these experiments must grow quite large — they have to be, in order to accelerate particles with enough energy to properly study them.

Yes. There have been suggestions that a small linear accelerator could do it.

> the wakefield accelerator has been suggested. Physicists send a beam of either electrons, protons, or a laser through a plasma. Free electrons in the plasma move toward the beam, but overshoot it, then come crashing back, creating a bubble structure behind the beam and intense electric fields. If you inject particles, like more electrons, into the wake, it can accelerate the injected particles in a shorter amount of time with an electric field 10 or more times stronger. In the study, proton-driven plasma wakefield acceleration has been demonstrated for the first time.

That looks feasible.

> These electrons were accelerated up to 2 GeV in approximately 10 m of plasma.

2 GeV is 10 metres seems exceptionally good.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0485-4
> The protons have an energy of 400 GeV

Oh …

In other words you need to accelerate a bunch of protons to 400 GeV to get enough power to accelerate a few electrons to 2 GeV.

I think I’ll scrap that idea.