Particle accelerator

The accelerator was developed at the University of Texas and is scaled down by a factor of 10,000 when compared to conventional accelerators. Within a decade, an accelerator of 20 gigaelectronvolts may be possible. This design has the potential to revolutionize research by making technology available to institutions that do not have access to traditional units due to space or budget constraints

"We have accelerated about half a billion electrons to 2 gigaelectronvolts over a distance of about 1 inch," said Mike Downer, professor of physics in the College of Natural Sciences. "Until now that degree of energy and focus has required a conventional accelerator that stretches more than the length of two football fields. It's a downsizing of a factor of approximately 10,000."

Downer said he expects 10 GeV accelerators of a few inches in length to be developed within the next few years, and he believes 20 GeV accelerators of similar size could be developed within a decade.

Downer said that the electrons from the current 2 GeV accelerator can be converted into "hard" X-rays as bright as those from large-scale facilities. He believes that with further refinement they could even drive an X-ray free electron laser, the brightest X-ray source currently available to science.

A tabletop X-ray laser would be transformative for chemists and biologists, who could use the bright X-rays to study the molecular basis of matter and life with atomic precision, and femtosecond time resolution, without traveling to a large national facility.

"The X-rays we'll be able to produce are of femtosecond duration, which is the time scale on which molecules vibrate and the fastest chemical reactions take place," said Downer. "They will have the energy and brightness to enable us to see, for example, the atomic structure of single protein molecules in a living sample."

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