Smaller accelerators for particle physics?
Tuesday, May 27, 2014 - 14:20
in Physics & Chemistry
It took every inch of the Large Hadron Collider's 17-mile length to accelerate particles to energies high enough to discover the Higgs boson. Now, imagine an accelerator that could do the same thing in, say, the length of a football field. Or less. That is the promise of laser-plasma accelerators. Scientists have grappled with building these devices for two decades, and a new theoretical study predicts that this may be easier than previously thought.