Plasma cells observed through a vacuum window
Plasma cells observed through a vacuum window - Mini particle accelerators are a step closer to being realised after a new study co-led by UCL researchers showed it would be possible to accelerate millions of bunches of electrons per second using plasma waves. The technique involves a high-energy laser or particle beam being fired into a cylinder of plasma - a soup of ionised atoms - creating waves like those produced by a speedboat in water. Bunches of electrons are fired into the plasma straight after, 'riding' the newly created plasma waves and being accelerated to very high energies quickly. The technique has the potential to drastically reduce the size of particle colliders (for instance the Large Hadron Collider, which accelerates protons, is 27km long) and free-electron lasers, used to probe the structures of materials and processes, as the cylinder in which the electrons are accelerated are typically just a few centimetres long. For most applications of the technology, thousands or millions of bunches of electrons need to be accelerated per second, but, given that the plasma needs to settle to close to its original state each time a new bunch is fired in, it was uncertain if this high repetition rate was possible. In the new study, published in Nature , the team of researchers accelerated electrons at the FLASHForward facility at the German Electron Synchrotron (DESY) in Hamburg to investigate how quickly the plasma returned to a settled state, finding it did so in 63 nanoseconds.
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