Femtosecond X-rays from tabletop accelerator

‘We have accelerated about half a billion electrons to 2 gigaelectronvolts over a distance of about 1 inch,’ said Mike Downer, professor of physics in the College of Natural Sciences. ‘Until now that degree of energy and focus has required a conventional accelerator that stretches more than the length of two football fields. It’s a downsizing of a factor of approximately 10,000.’

The results, published in Nature Communications, are said to mark a major milestone in the advance toward multi-gigaelectronvolt (GeV) laser plasma accelerators becoming standard equipment in research laboratories.

Downer said he expects 10GeV accelerators of a few inches in length to be developed within the next few years, and he believes 20GeV accelerators of similar size could be developed within a decade.

Downer said that the electrons from the current 2GeV accelerator can be converted into ‘hard’ X-rays as bright as those from large-scale facilities. He believes that with further refinement they could even drive an X-ray free electron laser, the brightest X-ray source currently available to science.