World's Smallest Particle Accelerator

ramp it up and make that bullet train from LA to san fran

The initial idea that comes to my mind is that this might make a flat panel phosphor screen possible. That is if a chip laser has enough energy to perform this acceleration on enough electrons. You never can tell with videos from a research lab if this is the only small part but a room of equipment was needed to get it to function or almost any other critical details.

Well if you click on the picture it takes you to the article which is about the attempt to make a portable xray device for battlefield applications, primarily, but I imagine it could find uses in portable scanner technologies or even other unmentioned applications....such as?

Here is a potential XRay source for battlefield use.Very simple,light,inexpensive and field repairable.

The principle operates on the theory that the electrons are decelerated suddenly when they encounter the adhesive.A further refined model uses a rotating lead cylinder and a plastic wheel to generate X Rays at the junction of the two wheels.

It has been a while since I first saw this,and I am sure further development has been made since.

http://digitaljournal.com/article/261560

Here is a link to more of Seth Putterman's intriguing work at UCLA:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6RutDwO3XU

so what you are saying is, ........ this is also a picture of the World's smallest particle accelerator.......

Transporting zeros and ones at the speed of light?

A more in-depth explanation.

SLAC develops 'accelerator on a chip'

What about CERN?

Will we use it as a pasta press?

Moore's Law, you know.

Out with the old, in with the new.

Maybe we can use this to go to Mars.

Interesting. This sounds like a more efficient method to accelerate electrons at the point of acceleration but they still do not give a feeling for how much added equipment (lasers, magnets, etc.) is required to achieve this little wonder. The description does imply that the electron bunches will be very short. Similarly the accelerated current level will likely be very small. You're not going to get anything approaching an ampere of current out of one of these. Thus a linear accelerator application seems very feasible but I do not see this approach used in a storage ring application.

In the realm of possible real world applications outside of a research tool, maybe this could do e-beam welding to silicon.

Another "outside the box" application idea could be a handheld chemical scanner? The e-beam once stopped will produce a presumably controllable spectrum of light. [Just like a traditional X-Ray tube.] This might allow for either absorbance or reflection spectroscopy.

For a nominal fee it could also wax your car as you drive.

"Accelerators currently use microwaves to boost the energy of electrons. Researchers have been looking for more economical alternatives, and this new technique, which uses ultra-fast lasers to drive the accelerator, is a leading candidate, they said."

this means a chirp laser, imho.... but how it is used to accelerate electrons I dont understand = ?????

The electrons are first accelerated to near light-speed in a conventional accelerator,

No free lunch.