From zero to a billion electron volts in 3.3 centimeters

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The drive laser beam travels through a plasma inside a capillary wave guide in titanium sapphire.
The drive laser beam travels through a plasma inside a capillary wave guide in titanium sapphire.

In a precedent-shattering demonstration of the potential of laser-wakefield acceleration, scientists at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, working with colleagues at the University of Oxford, have accelerated electron beams to energies exceeding a billion electron volts (1 GeV) in a distance of just 3.3 centimeters. The researchers report their results in the October issue of Nature Physics.


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