Amazing stuff!
"... Now, accelerator physicists ... producing petawatt pulses of electrons that could also have spectacular applications. ...
at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory ...
The ultra-short electron pulses might serve to make certain accelerator-based x-ray sources shine even brighter and generate plasma like that seen in astrophysical phenomena such as gamma-ray bursts. If the pulses can be made 10 times shorter still, they might even be used to try to rip particles out of the vacuum of empty space. ..."
From the abstract:
"In this Letter, we report on the experimental generation of high energy (10 GeV), ultrashort (femtosecond-duration), ultrahigh current (∼0.1 MA), petawatt peak power electron beams in a particle accelerator. These extreme beams enable the exploration of a new frontier of high-intensity beam-light and beam-matter interactions broadly relevant across fields ranging from laboratory astrophysics to strong field quantum electrodynamics and ultrafast quantum chemistry. We demonstrate our ability to generate and control the properties of these electron beams by means of a laser-electron beam shaping technique. This experimental demonstration opens the door to on-the-fly customization of extreme beam current profiles for desired experiments and is poised to benefit a broad swath of cross-cutting applications of relativistic electron beams."
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