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This article comes from the official account of Wechat: SF Chinese (ID:kexuejiaodian), author: SF

Particle accelerators have great potential in semiconductor applications, medical, medical imaging, materials, energy and medical research. But the traditional accelerator needs a lot of space and is expensive. Recently, scientists have successfully reduced the kilometer-level accelerator to less than 20 meters by using laser wake acceleration technology.

A team of scientists led by scientists at the University of Texas at Austin have successfully developed a compact particle accelerator less than 20 meters long, according to an article published in matter and radiation in extreme conditions (Matter and Radiation at Extremes). The compact accelerator can generate electron beams with an energy of 10 billion electron volts (10 GeV).

The intense laser pulse focused on the plasma accelerated by the laser wake can excite the nonlinear plasma wave. Under appropriate conditions, electrons from the background plasma are trapped in the plasma wave and can be accelerated to superluminal speed. This scheme is called laser wake accelerator.

The acceleration gradient of the laser wake field is about 3 orders of magnitude higher than that obtained by the traditional radio frequency accelerator technique. Since the concept of laser wake acceleration was first proposed in 1979, it has been thought to be expected to reduce kilometer-scale traditional accelerators and radiation sources to room-sized machines.

In the new study, scientists conducted a laser wake accelerator experiment-using a 1000 trillion watt laser to excite the wake and nanoparticles to help inject electrons into the acceleration phase of the wake. The results show that the electron beam of 340 pC and 10 ±1.86 GeV can be produced by the laser wake accelerator assisted by nanoparticles about 10 cm in length. (pC is Picook, 1 Pikuk is 1/100000000000 of 1 Cook. ) this accelerator can also produce low-energy electron beams (40-6 billion electron volts).

Compact accelerator

The compact accelerator consists of an air chamber, a dipole magnet and two scintillation screens DRZ1 and DRZ2. The whole device is placed in a vacuum chamber. Lasers and electron beams propagate from right to left.

The gas chamber is the core of the accelerator. The ablation laser focuses on the surface of the metal plate through the top window and ablates to produce nanoparticles. The nanoparticles are mixed with helium and filled uniformly in the gas chamber. The laser emitted by the Texas Petawa laser enters the chamber through a round hole 3 mm in diameter and produces many electrons (leaving the chamber through another round hole 3 mm in diameter).

High-energy accelerators belong to high-energy accelerators, whether they are 10 billion electron volts or 40-6 billion electron volts. There are only a handful of accelerators that can reach 10 billion electron volts in the world, and most of these circular accelerators are kilometer in diameter.

High-energy accelerators can produce a variety of secondary high-energy particle flows, in addition to high-energy physics experiments, low-energy and medium-energy physics experiments can also be carried out. In addition to physical experiments, high-energy accelerators can also simulate the destructive effects of nuclear weapons explosions and produce fissile materials.

The electron beam will produce synchrotron radiation in the synchrotron, which is of course a bad thing to increase the electron energy. however, synchrotron radiation is widely used in molecular biology, surface physics, surface chemistry, astrophysics, nonlinear optics and semiconductor device technology. For example, synchrotron radiation beam lithography can reach the pico-meter level, which is three orders of magnitude smaller than electron beam etching, and if the technology is mature, personal computers may be reduced to the size of a matchbox or even smaller in the future.

Many high-energy particles produced by high-energy accelerators can kill cancer cells. By controlling the energy of high-energy particles and making them act on the cancerous part of the human body, we can eliminate cancer cells and avoid destroying normal tissues in the human body.

Scientists are exploring the use of this accelerator for various purposes. They hope to use it to test the radiation resistance of space electronic devices, to image 3D internal structures designed by new semiconductor chips, and even to develop new cancer treatments and advanced medical imaging technologies.

The accelerator can also be used to drive another device called an X-ray free-electron laser-- it can make "slow-motion movies" of processes that occur on an atomic or molecular scale, such as the interaction between drugs and cells. changes inside the cells that can cause the battery to catch fire, chemical reactions inside solar panels, and changes when viral proteins infect cells.

References:

The acceleration of a high-charge electron bunch to 10 GeV in a 10-cm nanoparticle-assisted wakefield accelerator | Matter and Radiation at Extremes | AIP Publishing

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