A Plasma Tube to Bring Particles up to Speed at SLAC
A team led by scientists from the University of California, Los Angeles and the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory has reached another milestone in developing a promising technology for accelerating particles to high energies in short distances: They created a tiny tube of hot, ionized gas, or plasma, in which the particles remain tightly focused as they fly through it.
Seen here, as a bunch of positrons (blue), the antimatter siblings of electrons, travels down the center of a tube of hot, ionized gas, or plasma (orange), it creates a “wake,” which could be used to accelerate a trailing positron bunch. Using a plasma tube results in positron bunches that remain tightly focused on their way through the tube.
Original public domain image from Flickr