Visualising ultra-fast phenomena
Professor Carsten P. Welsch, EuPRAXIA’s Director of Communication, Group Leader at The Cockcroft Institute and Head of Physics at Liverpool University, explains how the EuPRAXIA network is collaborating to design the world’s first plasma-based accelerator with industrial beam quality.
To capture the fastest movements – such as proteins unfurling or molecules breaking apart – you need a light source that operates at a similar speed.
International scientists collaborating on the EuPRAXIA project are edging closer to making this a reality following a symposium held in Liverpool, UK, earlier this year (6 July). They are developing a new generation of particle accelerator that will be stronger and more compact than accelerators used by healthcare and industry today, opening up opportunities for new types of applications.
Having pushed current accelerator technology to its physical limits, the group of 16 institutions and 24 associated partners is aiming to design the world’s first plasma-based accelerator with industrial beam quality.
This accelerator would be able to sustain an oscillating electric field up to 1,000 times greater than most conventional radiofrequency accelerators in a much shorter distance, and be used to produce laser-like flashes of radiation that can detect ultra-fast phenomena.
The plasma wave or ‘wakefield’ accelerator works in a similar way to a wakesurfer.
When a motorboat crosses a lake, it disturbs the surface of the water creating a wake. If the boat travels at speed these waves get stronger and a surfer, attached to the back of the boat, gains speed by riding the waves.
It is possible to recreate this effect by using plasma as the ‘lake’ and a laser as the ‘boat’, with the particles accelerated across the tops of the waves in a similar way to the wakesurfer.
Focusing a beam of light increases its intensity, and current technology can achieve a spot of 1/20th the width of a human hair with intensity greater than that of the sun.
The ‘Quantum Leap Towards the Next Generation of Particle Accelerators’ symposium offered pan-European researchers, industry delegates and local students an insight into the latest advances in plasma accelerators, potential applications and the exciting career opportunities in this field.
The EuPRAXIA consortium is making good progress towards a conceptual design report for the world’s first 5GeV plasma-based accelerator with industry beam quality, due to be released at the end of 2018 – the next stage is to raise funds required to build it.
http://www.eupraxia-project.eu/symposium.html
