Stanford University was awarded a $13.5 million by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, for its contributions to the U.S. Department of Energy's Stanford Linear Accelerator Center National Accelerator Laboratory, in building a particle accelerator machine, but shrinking it to about as big as a shoebox.
The particle accelerator was based on the innovative technique known as accelerator on a chip. It uses laser sight to send electrons through purposefully made chips and can potentially revolutionize different fields of science.
"We can't even imagine the creative applications they would find for this technology," said Joel England, one of SLAC's physicists and one of the research team members working on the compact particle accelerator.
The co-principal investigator of the project, Professor Robert Byer of Stanford University, added that a successful prototype will be able to facilitate a new generation of compact accelerators that could have applications in security scanning, therapeutic machines and diagnostic imaging.
"This prototype could set the stage for a new generation of 'tabletop' accelerators, with unanticipated discoveries in biology and materials science," Byer elaborated.
Particle accelerators have been important tools for scientists all over the world. They helped facilitate crucial, field defining discoveries in different fields. The machines are used to collide high energy particles for fundamental physics experiments as well as generate X-ray beams for medical, biological and chemical uses.
One problem with particle accelerators is that even until now they are quite massive in size. Scientists believe that discovering how to make compact sized versions of these machines could reduce both the cost of having the machine and the energy required to run it.
A compact particle accelerator is an international dream of the scientific community, one that several concerned bodies are working hard to turn into reality. The concept was inspired by experiments conducted by scientists from Stanford and SLAC as well as those conducted by the Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany.
In the SLAC-Stanford study, which was published in the Nature journal, the electrons were first sped up to reach near light speed levels then made to enter the specially designed silicon chip mentioned earlier.
Based on the study results, the SLAC accelerator effectively could replace chips about 100 meters long if it can reach its full potential.
As for the study done in Germany, featured in Physical Review Letters, researchers found that a laser can be used to improve the acceleration rate of low energy electrons.
