A group of researchers at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have developed a new strategy to generate high-energy, well-aligned proton beams, enhancing laser-plasma acceleration. According to the research, the main finding is a self-healing water sheet , which solves a critical operational problem, while revealing unexpected and beneficial effects on proton beam quality.
Laser-plasma acceleration and the new production strategy
Laser plasma accelerators ( LPAs ) represent a compact and low-cost alternative to current accelerators, but they have technical limitations, such as destroying the target after each laser pulse. To solve this problem, scientists tested a self-healing water film instead of a solid target. This change eliminated the need to constantly replace the impact material, increasing operational efficiency.
However, the researchers noticed an unexpected additional effect : the evaporation of water generated a vapor cloud that interacted with the proton beam , creating magnetic fields that naturally focused the beam. As a result, the new design reduced the divergence of the proton beam by an order of magnitude and improved its efficiency by a factor of 100.
This discovery solves an operational problem of LPAs, while opening up new possibilities for applications in medicine, accelerator research, and inertial fusion. In particular, the development of compact and affordable proton beam sources could expand their use in medical treatments, such as proton therapy for cancer , and in microchip manufacturing .
The experiment was conducted at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory’s Central Laser Facility , and demonstrated that the system could operate stably at a rate of five pulses per second for hundreds of laser shots. Furthermore, the results were achieved using an affordable low-energy laser system, indicating that the technology could be implemented on a broader scale.
These exciting results pave the way for new applications of high-power relativistic lasers for applications in medicine, accelerator research and inertial fusion.
Siegfried Glenzer, director of the High Energy Density Sciences division at SLAC.
The study, published in Nature , was funded by the Office of Science of the United States Department of Energy ( DOE ), DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration and the National Science Foundation ( NSF ) . With these results, researchers hope that plasma-laser accelerators will take the next step toward practical applications in science and industry.
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Source and photos: SLAC
