This animation explains how researchers accelerate positrons with a plasma – a method that may help boost the energy and shrink the size of future linear particle colliders.
researchers use large and powerful
particle accelerators to study nature's
fundamental particles and forces in
particle collisions in 2012 for instance
scientists discovered the Higgs boson
and collisions of two proton beams at
CERN's Large Hadron Collider or LHC
since protons are composite particles
collisions at the LHC are very complex
and difficult to analyze therefore
particle physicists plan a next
generation Collider that would smash
elementary particles into one another
electrons and their antimatter siblings
positrons however current technology
would require accelerators that are tens
of kilometers long and researchers are
looking for alternatives that shrink the
size of colliders while accelerating
particles to increasingly high energies
one promising approach is plasma
wakefield acceleration which has been
shown to work efficiently for electrons
this approach uses pairs of electrons
bunches when an electron dry Bunch
brought up to speed and slacks Fassett
facility enters an ionized gas or plasma
it creates a plasma wake that
researchers used to focus and accelerate
a trailing electron bunch for a positron
Bunch following an electron or positron
drive Bunch the situation is much more
challenging no matter where the
researchers place the trailing positron
Bunch it would experience defocusing in
the wake field depending on the location
the trailing bunch would also slow down
now researchers have found a new method
to speed up positrons instead of using
two bunches
they found that a single positron bunch
interacts with the plasma in a way that
the bunch head creates a wake field that
is accelerating and focusing for the
bunch tail plasma wake field
acceleration for electrons and positrons
could be used one day to build Collider
structures that are a hundred to a
thousand times shorter than current
designs even before then they could
potentially be used as a small-scale
add-on to existing or future linear
accelerators boosting their energy and
collision power
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