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Laser wakefields

Bringing accelerators down to size

Nature Photonics volume 2, pages 526–527 (2008)Cite this article

Laser-based accelerator technology has been given a boost thanks to researchers based in Korea, Japan and the USA. Their latest research could lead the way towards compact accelerators that can deliver brilliant electron and X-ray beams.

The particle accelerator is one of the most successful pieces of apparatus born from twentieth-century science. It has contributed to the discovery of the most fundamental building blocks of matter and helped us to uncover the fascinating physical (and sometimes biological) nature of the world around us1. Despite this grand success, conventional accelerators are hitting practical limits related to their sheer size and the cost of building them, and this could jeopardize the future of accelerator-based research. Twenty-first century scientists need a new approach, and the laser could provide this. On page 571 of this issue, Nasr Hafz and colleagues present results from one of the smallest and simplest gigaelectronvolt-class laser-based accelerators developed so far2.

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Figure 1: A comparison of accelerators.
Figure 2: Use of a laser wakefield to generate intense, coherent attosecond X-rays.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Toshiki Tajima is at the Japan Atomic Energy Agency, Kizugawa, Kyoto 619-0215, and the High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK), Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-0801, Japan. tajima.toshiki@jaea.go.jp,

    Toshiki Tajima

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  1. Toshiki Tajima
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Tajima, T. Bringing accelerators down to size. Nature Photon 2, 526–527 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2008.167

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2008.167

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