Strathclyde physicists achieve new energies in ion acceleration

Particle accelerators are somewhat maligned but vastly important pieces of equipment. Vital to large-scale physics experiments such as those at CERN, they are sometimes derided as just the ultimate in “boys toys”. But high energy charged particles have many applications, including cancer therapy, highly accurate heating processes, probing exotic states of matter and even initiating nuclear fusion. The problem until now has been in achieving the very high energies – analogous to high particle speeds – without enormous and costly equipment.

The Strathclyde research, led by physicist Prof Paul McKenna, promises to lead to much more compact ion sources that have previously been available. McKenna has been studying the effects of focusing a laser into plasma, a form of matter consisting of gaseous charged particles. The laser produces very high electric fields which accelerate the ions to high speeds over a very short length; typically about a thousand times shorter than the radio-frequency cavities (similar to a microwave oven) generally used in accelerators.