Sep 30, 2013 10:29 AM EDT By Russell Westerholm, UniversityHerald Reporter

In a new series of experiments scientists were able to use a laser to accelerate electrons ten times faster than normal technology would allow in a glass chip no larger than a grain of rice, according to a news release.

Scientists from Stanford University and the U.S. Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory reported their experiment in Friday's edition of the journal Nature.

"We still have a number of challenges before this technology becomes practical for real-world use, but eventually it would substantially reduce the size and cost of future high-energy particle colliders for exploring the world of fundamental particles and forces," said experiments leader Joel England, SLAC physicist. "It could also help enable compact accelerators and X-ray devices for security scanning, medical therapy and imaging, and research in biology and materials science."

The new "accelerator on a chip" has potential to set a new standard for "tabletop" accelerators, the scientists said. It can match SLAC's two-mile-long linear accelerator in 100 feet and also convey a million additional electron pulses per second.

At about ten times the acceleration provided by the current SLAC linear accelerator, the new one achieved a gradient of 300 million electronvolts per meter in its initial demonstration. An acceleration gradient is the amount of energy gained per length of the accelerator.

"Our ultimate goal for this structure is one billion electronvolts per meter, and we're already one-third of the way in our first experiment," said Stanford applied physics Professor Robert Byer, the principal investigator for this research.

The new particle accelerator could provide scientists with a long-awaited answer to a need for more economic alternatives. The "accelerator on a chip" uses commercial lasers and low-cost, mass-production methods. It uses ultrafast lasers to spur the accelerator instead of microwaves, which is the current technique for the technology.

In the experiments, the electrons were spurred to their near-light-speed rates before being focused into a half-micron-high channel within a glass chip just half of a millimeter in length.

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