From Google News

In a recent finding researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratorya and Stanford University have been able to accelerate electrons at ten times higher rate in a nanostructured glass than conventional technology. The chip is even smaller than a rice grain. The discovery is published in the Nature journal.

SLAC physicist Joel England said, "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." He led the experiments.

England added further that the new achievement could help in enabling compact accelerators as well as X-ray devices for medical therapy, security scanning and imaging. Researchers believe the finding will stage new generations of tabletop accelerators.

The scientists added, "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."

In current practice microwaves is used in accelerators to boost energy of electrons, but the researchers now looks for more economical alternatives and the new technique is a leading candidate.

Usually the particles accelerate in two stages. In the first stage they get boosted to about the speed of light and in the next stage any additional acceleration increases their energy, and this is challenging as it does not increase speed.

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