{"id":125719,"date":"2021-08-01T05:23:04","date_gmt":"2021-08-01T12:23:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/08\/this-miniature-particle-accelerator-powers-a-tiny-laser-with-huge-promise"},"modified":"2021-08-01T05:23:04","modified_gmt":"2021-08-01T12:23:04","slug":"this-miniature-particle-accelerator-powers-a-tiny-laser-with-huge-promise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/08\/this-miniature-particle-accelerator-powers-a-tiny-laser-with-huge-promise","title":{"rendered":"This Miniature Particle Accelerator Powers a Tiny Laser With Huge Promise"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/this-miniature-particle-accelerator-powers-a-tiny-laser-with-huge-promise2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Particle accelerators are hugely important in the study of the matter of the Universe, but the ones we think of tend to be gigantic instruments \u2013 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencealert.com\/cern-has-just-described-its-next-gen-particle-smasher-and-it-s-a-monster\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">surrounding cities<\/a> in some cases. Now scientists have made a much smaller version to power an advanced laser, a setup that could be just as useful as its larger counterparts.<\/p>\n<p>The particle accelerator in question is a <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Plasma_acceleration\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">plasma wakefield accelerator<\/a>, which generates short and intense bursts of electrons, and the laser it\u2019s powering is what\u2019s known as a <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Free-electron_laser\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">free-electron laser<\/a> (FEL), which uses its light to analyze atoms, molecules, and condensed matter in incredibly high resolutions.<\/p>\n<p>While this scenario has been tried before, the resulting laser light hasn\u2019t been intense enough to be useful at smaller scales. Here, the researchers were able to keep the setup enclosed in few normal-sized rooms while amplifying the final electron beam produced by the laser, increasing the intensity by 100 times in the last step of the process.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Particle accelerators are hugely important in the study of the matter of the Universe, but the ones we think of tend to be gigantic instruments \u2013 surrounding cities in some cases. Now scientists have made a much smaller version to power an advanced laser, a setup that could be just as useful as its larger [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-125719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-particle-physics","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125719"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125719\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}