WashingtonAccelerator on a chip
Could spawn new generations of smaller, less expensive devices
for science and medicine say Stanford, SLAC researchers
September 28, 2013
The nanostructured glass chip is smaller than a grain of rice (credit: Stanford University)
The achievement was reported in the journal Nature by a team including scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University.
Compact accelerators and X-ray devices
“We still have a number of challenges before this technology becomes practical for real-world use, but eventually it would substantially reduce the size and cost of future high-energy particle colliders for exploring the world of fundamental particles and forces,” said Joel England, the SLAC physicist who led the experiments.
“It could also help enable compact accelerators and X-ray devices for security scanning, medical therapy and imaging, and research in biology and materials science.”
Because it employs commercial lasers and low-cost, mass-production techniques, the researchers believe it will set the stage for new generations of “tabletop” accelerators.
At its full potential, the new “accelerator on a chip” could match the accelerating power of SLAC’s 2-mile-long linear accelerator in just 100 feet, and deliver a million more electron pulses per second.
This initial demonstration achieved an acceleration gradient, or amount of energy gained per length of the accelerator, of 300 million electronvolts per meter. That’s roughly 10 times the acceleration provided by the current SLAC linear accelerator.
“Our ultimate goal for this structure is one billion electronvolts per meter, and we’re already one-third of the way in our first experiment,” said Stanford applied physics Professor Robert Byer, the principal investigator for this research.
How it works
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Today’s accelerators use microwaves to boost the energy of electrons.
Researchers have been looking for more economical alternatives, and
this new technique, which uses ultrafast lasers to drive the
accelerator, is a leading candidate.
Experimental
set-up. Inset, a diagram of the DLA structure indicating the field
polarization direction and the effective periodic phase reset, depicted
as alternating red (acceleration) and black (deceleration) arrows
(credit: E. A. Peralta et al./Nature)
Particles are generally accelerated in two stages. First they are boosted to nearly the speed of light. Then any additional acceleration increases their energy, but not their speed; this is the challenging part.
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In the accelerator-on-a-chip experiments, electrons are first
accelerated to near light-speed in a conventional accelerator. Then they
are focused into a tiny, half-micron-high channel within a glass chip
just half a millimeter long.
Scanning
electron microscope image of the longitudinal cross-section of a
micro-fabricated dielectric laser accelerator (DLA) structure. Electrons
are accelerated between the nanoscale “teeth.” (Credit: E. A. Peralta
et al./Nature)
The channel was previously patterned with precisely spaced nanoscale ridges. Infrared laser light shining on the pattern generates electrical fields that interact with the electrons in the channel to boost their energy. (See animation below for more detail.)
Turning the accelerator on a chip into a full-fledged tabletop accelerator will require a more compact way to get the electrons up to speed before they enter the device.
A collaborating research group in Germany, led by Peter Hommelhoff at Friedrich Alexander University and the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics, has been looking for such a solution. It simultaneously reports in Physical Review Letters its success in using a laser to accelerate lower-energy electrons.
Portable/affordable X-ray machines for hospitals and laboratories
Applications for these new particle accelerators would go well beyond particle physics research. Byer said laser accelerators could drive compact X-ray free-electron lasers, comparable to SLAC’s Linac Coherent Light Source, that are all-purpose tools for a wide range of research.
Another possible application is small, portable X-ray sources to improve medical care for people injured in combat, as well as to provide more affordable medical imaging for hospitals and laboratories. That’s one of the goals of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Advanced X-Ray Integrated Sources program, which partially funded this research. Primary funding for this research is from the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science.
The study’s lead authors were Stanford graduate students Edgar Peralta and Ken Soong. Peralta created the patterned fused silica chips in the Stanford Nanofabrication Facility. Soong implemented the high-precision laser optics for the experiment at SLAC’s Next Linear Collider Test Accelerator. Additional contributors included researchers from the University of California-Los Angeles and Tech-X Corp. in Boulder, Colo.
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