Manchester team creates pocket-sized particle accelerator

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Manchester University researchers have developed a pocket-sized particle accelerator that they claim could pave the way to the development of cheap and compact accelerators for use in applications ranging from radiotherapy to security screening.

Capable of projecting ultra-short electron beams with laser light at more than 99.99% of the speed of light, the technology works by slowing down light to match the speed of the electrons using a specially designed metallic structure lined with quartz layers thinner than a human hair.

Described as a huge leap forward, this simultaneously offers the ability to measure and manipulate particle bunches on time scales of less than 10 femtoseconds (0.000 000 000 000 01 seconds, or the time is takes light to travel 1/100th of a millimetre). This will enable them to create strobe photographs of atomic motion.

The group’s work - described in a paper in Nature Photonics – used lasers to generate pulses of light in the terahertz (THz) frequency, a region of the electromagnetic spectrum between infrared and microwave

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