In the October 18, 2023 issue of the Journal Nature scientists report they have made the world's smallest particle Accelerator:
Coherent nanophotonic electron accelerator <https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06602-7.epdf?sharing_token=SPQgOkRevWzXWP6lb_KM_tRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0OsFtl2hsh124Lxz46d6DGAzD4pRolORBhqsOhlUOyy24CY-5bOXHScgpg9lx9EC5G_aBTdVzEok2m56r8toEfzcyhIp0GM1XtkkSufZIPTfQWnaL_vF1zRqDUvgyVYZwwPU61eqEOChzJzoUGeu-7R8frfQKhSd4z_Xo0FuY_OQnp0tSZZ9rlVEoB4_QWbjps%3D&tracking_referrer=physicsworld.com> The accelerator is just 0.5 millimeters long (0.02 inches) an electron beam enters one one end of a channel with an energy of 28,400 electron-volts and comes out the other end with an energy of 40,700 electron-volts. The machine doesn't work well for electrons that have very low energy, it's more efficient when the electrons are moving close to the speed of light that's why they first boost the electron's energy by other means to 28,400 electron-volts. The researchers are confident they should soon be able to reach 300,000 electron-volts which is the range of energy that an electron microscope's use which should make them much cheaper. Inexpensive high energy electrons might also replace Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography used to make computer chips. They made their accelerator with silicone because they were most familiar with how to work with it, but quartz would be much better because it has a higher electric breakdown field. The lead researcher of the article says: "*I might be in a very small minority thinking this is going to play a role in high-energy physics. The technology should be usable in materials such as quartz, whose breakdown field is almost 1000 times that of a traditional accelerator. We expect this work to lead directly to the advent of nanophotonic accelerators offering high acceleration gradients up to the billion electron volt per meter range. Our millimetre becomes a metre. By the time we get to a metre we should match the SLAC two mile long electron accelerator in energy. Think about having an accelerator sitting in my office that matches SLAC. This new type of particle accelerator can be built using standard cleanroom techniques, such as electron beam lithography. This is why we think that our results represent a big step forward. Everyone can go ahead and start engineering useful machines from this.*" John K Clark See what's on my new list at Extropolis <https://groups.google.com/g/extropolis> wsa -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv0%3D7RqbGKp_Dw0fTcP_r4TOzv_oLr7XWaR9YfdSdBh8Zw%40mail.gmail.com.
