American laboratory creates a record strong electron beam

“We not only create super strong electron beams, but also control the beam on demand, which means we can explore more physical and chemical phenomena than ever,” Phys On March 9 quoted Claudio Emma, ​​a scientist at the SLAC national accelerator laboratory under the US Department of Energy. Emma works at SLAC’s advanced accelerator testing facility (Facet-II) and is also the main author of the newly published study in the magazine Physical Review Letters.

Traditionally, a microwave field is used to compress and converge the electron beam. The electron in the field is unevenly arranged, so the electrons are farther behind the rear energy than the front electron.

Emma explained, this is like uneven athletes at the beginning of the race. “After that, we let them walk around a bend so the electron behind catch the electron ahead. Finally, you will have a group of electron concentrated into beams of convergence,” he said.

The problem with this method is when the electrons accelerate, they emit radiation and lose energy, causing the beam quality to decrease. That creates a trade -off between the energy and the quality of the beam. “We cannot apply traditional methods to compress the electrons on a scale under the micrometer and still preserve beam quality,” Emma said.

To solve this problem, the SLAC team compresses billions of electrons into a group with a length of less than a micromet with a laser -based shaping technique, which is developed for free X -ray electron laser.

After a few months of testing and perfecting laser shaping techniques, Emma and colleagues can continuously create high -energy electron beams, lasting at Femto seconds (a Femto seconds in a million -seconds), the maximum power at Petawatt (a petawatt is equal to one million watting), with a strong intensity of 5 times older than the old level.

The new beam of electron allows scientists to learn a series of natural phenomena, check the hypotheses in quantum physics, material science and astrophysics. For example, in astronomical physics, beams can be shown to a solid or gas target to create similar fibers in stars. “Scientists know about the presence of these fibers, but now we can check how they appear and develop in the laboratory with unprecedented energy levels before,” Emma said.