CERN's Pioneering Mini-Accelerator Passes First Test (nature.com) 30
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Nature: An experiment at CERN has demonstrated a new way of accelerating electrons to high energies -- one that could dramatically shrink the size of future particle accelerators and lower their costs. The technique is the latest entrant in a hot race to develop a technology called plasma wakefield acceleration. The method uses waves in plasma, a soup of ionized atoms, to push electrons to ever-higher energies over distances much shorter than those required in today's particle accelerators. Several laboratories have demonstrated plasma wakefield acceleration using two different approaches; most teams use laser beams to create the plasma waves needed. The latest work is the first to show that protons can also induce the waves and achieve electron acceleration -- a technique that may have advantages over the others because protons can carry high energies over long distances.
In this case, researchers diverted protons that would usually be fed into the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, Europe's particle-physics lab near Geneva, Switzerland, and instead inserted them into the wakefield accelerator, called the Advanced Wakefield Experiment (AWAKE). The machine worked as expected and created a consistent beam of accelerated electrons. "That, for us, was a major achievement," says Matthew Wing, a physicist at University College London, who is deputy spokesperson for AWAKE. "It essentially says that the method works, and it's never been done before." The work is described in Nature on 29 August.
In this case, researchers diverted protons that would usually be fed into the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, Europe's particle-physics lab near Geneva, Switzerland, and instead inserted them into the wakefield accelerator, called the Advanced Wakefield Experiment (AWAKE). The machine worked as expected and created a consistent beam of accelerated electrons. "That, for us, was a major achievement," says Matthew Wing, a physicist at University College London, who is deputy spokesperson for AWAKE. "It essentially says that the method works, and it's never been done before." The work is described in Nature on 29 August.
Re: (Score:3)
eh? most science and tech budgets fell under Obama though he promised doubling them. Hilary would do differently?
Re:TRUMP's Anti Science REVEALED (Score:5, Informative)
An easier solution (Score:2)
AWAKE (Score:2, Insightful)
Or. As the kids are saying, Awoke.
I won't even pretend to be intelligent enough to discern the ramifications of this development, yet it seems plausible this is a big advancement.
QWouldn't it be great if our ability to advance technology outpaced our tribalism-based predisposition towards self-destruction?
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Kids aren't saying "awoke", just "woke". Get with it, grandad.
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Kids aren't saying "awoke", just "woke". Get with it, grandad.
Disrespectful agrasswalker, get off my lawn.
Sounds like a good end of world movie (Score:3)
That was a rather complicated read... Increased particle acceleration firing electrons into a mix of more electrons and positive ions instead being in a vacuum.
To what end, I have no idea. But interesting.
Regarding the movie, from one paragraph in TFA:
1. Super Proton Synchrotron
2. rubidium plasma
3. A specially built smaller accelerator produces electrons that are inserted in the protonsâ(TM) wake.
4. Energies in even the 50-GeV range could be useful for experiments in which electrons are shot at a fixed target.
#3 and 4 have me mystified, great lines for a mad scientist.
Plot: Just have reality rip apart rather than some earthquake, tsunami, meteor, or Sharknado. Reality rips like broken glass, spreading from the experiment center. There is a twist ending.
Someone write the script, let's get this movie made!
Re:Sounds like a good end of world movie (Score:5, Interesting)
They aren't too hard to understand, basically you have a plasma (soup of electrons and nuclei) and fire a laser down the axis. The laser's electric field pushes particles outward momentarily, and after the laser is gone they start collapsing towards where they originally were, creating a "wave" that progresses down the axis of the plasma. By injecting electrons at the correct moment you can accelerate them by "surfing" this wave, exactly as a human surfer on an ocean wave.
You can vary the wave's speed arbitrarily and even faster than the speed of light if you wish (some get lost here, but think of pointing a laser pointer at the moon in a sweeping motion - the dot might go faster than light but no information transfer is occurring). This along with the massive electric fields means your accelerations gradients are much larger than the typical cavity accelerators, and can even achieve giga-electronvolt energies in cm. Neat technology that can put high energy labs on tabletops potentially.
I'm not an expert by any means though, just my understanding. Based on the summary I believe this group showed by replacing the laser with a proton beam you can still demonstrate the same effect, but I'll have to read it more carefully to get a better idea.
Re: Sounds like a good end of world movie (Score:2)
Imagine what a nice FEL this will make
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Would be pretty slick, probably even a compact x-ray laser with a good undulator...
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Thanks for the "more clear than the article" summary.
This does sound like the end of the world: "high energy labs on tabletops"...
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Haha, we won't be able to match the energy of particles hitting the upper atmosphere for millenia (if ever). For example check out :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
More info needed (Score:1)
Mini-Accelerator Passes First Test
Which Mini? Hardtop 2 Door, Hardtop 4 Door, Countryman, Clubman, Convertible, ... - what?
Plasma Wakefield Accelerator (Score:2)
Good news. Just in time to get one cancelled in Texas.
Not as small as this one (Score:2)
If you've ever wanted a particle accelerator on your desk, and a CRT monitor just doesn't do it for you, I found just the thing [awesome.tech].
Wakefield and fusion, what do they have in common? (Score:2)
Plasma. And the fact that people have been working on them for decades with nothing to show for it.
This was a big story in Canada circa 1989 because they built a surfatron and reached some new limit. Now it's 30 years later and we're still not using them. Maybe in another 30 years?