First Petawatt Electron Beam Arrives, Ready to Rip Apart Matter and Space
upstart writes:
Ultra-high-power particle pulses could boost x-ray science and laboratory astrophysics:
By squeezing a packet of laser light into a tiny sliver of a second, physicists can produce superintense pulses that, if only for an instant, deliver as much power as 1 million nuclear plants. Such petawatt lasers have enabled scientists to manipulate materials in new ways, emulate the conditions inside planets, and even split atoms. Now, accelerator physicists have matched that feat, producing petawatt pulses of electrons that could also have spectacular applications.
"We've got the highest current, highest peak power electron beams ever generated, and we do that by just packing a large amount of charge into a very short bunch duration," says Claudio Emma, an accelerator physicist at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory who led the study. Described in a paper published today in Physical Review Letters, the electron pulses last one-quadrillionth of a second but carry 100 kiloamps of current.
"It's a supercool experiment," says Sergei Nagaitsev, an accelerator physicist at Brookhaven National Laboratory who was not involved in the work. Richard D'Arcy, a plasma accelerator physicist at the University of Oxford, adds, "It's not just an experimental demonstration of something interesting, it's a steppingstone on the way to megaamp beams." If achievable, those even more powerful beams might begin to perform extraordinary feats such as ripping particles out of empty space, he says.
[...] Petawatt electron pulses should have plenty of uses. Large facilities called free-electron lasers generate intense x-ray beams by firing electrons down a long chain of undulators. Those facilities, including SLAC's own Linac Coherent Light Source, could be made even brighter by firing shorter, more powerful electron bunches through the undulators. The amped-up lasers would open the way to, for example, probing chemical processes as they happen, Nagaitsev says. "These are the easy pickings."
An ultraintense electron pulse could also be used to generate plasmas like those seen in astrophysics, such as the jets of matter and radiation that shoot out of certain stellar explosions at near-light-speed. Researchers need only fire the electron beam into the right target. "This is a fantastic relativistic drill," Ferrario says. "The interaction of this with matter could be very interesting."
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.