Particle accelerators are usually huge structures—think of the 3.2-kilometer–long SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in Stanford, Calif. But scientists have been hard at work trying to shrink these accelerators down by using lasers to perform the accelerating. These particle accelerators would be the size of single room, and cost much less as well. Now, a startup says its laser-powered accelerator, the first commercial version of such a device, has successfully accelerated a beam of electrons. These could first be used in radiation tests of electronics designed for satellites and spacecraft.
The concept behind the new device was first detailed in 1979. An extremely powerful and ultrashort laser pulse strikes a gas, producing a plasma. The plasma oscillates in the laser’s wake, and electrons are dragged along in the plasma’s path, accelerating them to relativistic speeds.
These “wakefield accelerators“ can generate acceleration fields up to 1,000 times as great as what conventional particle colliders are capable of. Scientists have long suggested that wakefield accelerators could shrink kilometer-scale facilities to the size of a room or smaller.
“Democratization is the name of the game for us,” says Björn Manuel Hegelich, founder and CEO of TAU Systems in Austin, Texas. “We want to get these incredible tools into the hands of the best and brightest and let them do their magic.”
TAU has now successfully generated electron beams using its commercial laser-powered wakefield accelerator. “Laser-powered accelerators have been around in academic labs for more than 20 years,” Hegelich says. “What’s most exciting is that until now, they haven’t been available as tools for industry. This result is a major step to change that paradigm and make compact accelerators useful for the world outside of academia.”
The new accelerator uses a laser supplied by the Thales Group in France, which TAU notes displays exceptional stability. “The goal here is to focus on reliability and reproducibility rather than record performance,” Hegelich says.
The first units for customers will fit in a single room. “For the future, our aim is to reduce the laser to a large cabinet size,” Hegelich says.
TAU’s first commercial accelerator will be deployed at the startup’s facility in Carlsbad, Calif., which will operate as a showroom for customers to become familiar with the technology. TAU plans to offer use of its accelerator to commercial and government customers starting in 2026.
“This first commercial system will operate in the range of 60 to 100 million electron volts (MeVs) at 100 hertz with capacity to upgrade to higher energies in the future,” Hegelich says. “We’re not rushing to the highest energies yet because there’s a lot of low-hanging fruit in the 100 to 1,000 MeV range, where conventional accelerators are too large to be of practical use.” For comparison, the linear accelerator at SLAC can achieve electron energies…
Read full article: Plasma Wakefield Particle Accelerators Go Commercial
The post “Plasma Wakefield Particle Accelerators Go Commercial” by Charles Q. Choi was published on 12/04/2025 by spectrum.ieee.org