US scientists shrink giant lasers with 1,000x faster electron beams

US scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, in collaboration with TAU Systems Inc., have developed a new method using compact laser plasma accelerators (LPAs) to generate high-quality electron beams for X-ray free-electron lasers (XFELs). This approach accelerates electrons up to 1,000 times faster than conventional accelerators by achieving acceleration gradients of 100 gigavolts per meter, compared to about 50 megavolts per meter in traditional systems. As a result, accelerators that once required miles of space can now be reduced to just a few meters, significantly shrinking the size and potentially the cost of XFEL facilities. XFELs are critical scientific tools that produce bright X-ray light for studying matter at the atomic level, benefiting fields such as medicine, materials science, and biology. However, their large size has limited their availability worldwide. The new LPA technology addresses this by using laser-driven plasma waves to accelerate electrons, providing both the high energy and beam quality necessary