HIGH-ENERGY particle physicists are fond of smashing things, break them open them and see what’s inside. It’s a good technique of working out what the world is really made of, but it has its limits. The faster you hurl things, the more you find out. However, the apparatus needed to hurl things fast enough to interest today’s physicists is huge and horrifyingly expensive.
However, a table-top particle accelerator has been built by French physicists, who used a pair of laser beams to precisely control the acceleration of electrons within a plasma. Injecting laser beams into a plasma can create huge electric fields that accelerate the plasma’s electrons to high energies over relatively short distances.
Until now, however, the energy of these electron beams has been hard to control. A team led by Victor Malka at the Institute of Technology in Palaiseau, France, solved the problem by using intersecting beams from two carefully tuned lasers. At the point where they cross, the beams create a stable wave in the plasma, which in turn accelerates electrons to precise energies. The idea dates back more than a decade, but has proven difficult to perfect. The compact device developed by Malka packs as much power as one that would normally be about the size of a room.
The concept could also lead to a portable x-ray generator, there are already a commercial portable pyroelectric x-ray products available, but those products does not produce enough energy, for instance, choosing an energy up to 300 mega electron volts. Now it is easy - just press a button. The product is highly needed for medical imaging.
I think in the more distant future, we can foresee a number of other medical applications of pyroelectric crystals, including a wearable device that could provide safe, continuous cancer treatment.
Via: Newscientisttech
