BELLA broke the record of the NIF laser with a capacity of a PW

Less than a month after researchers at the National Center for ignition (National Ignition Facility - NIF) Lawrence Livermore Laboratory announced the successful test firing capacity of 500 TW laser beam (500 x 10 ^ 12 watts ), today, researchers at the laboratory laser acceleration Berkeley (Berkeley Lab Laser Accelerator - BELLA) has just broken the record of the NIF laser has a capacity of up to 1 PW (10 ^ 15 watts) in a 40-femtosecond pulses (10 ^ -15 seconds) and at a rate per second rate. To better illustrate this than, 1 PW larger combined power output of power stations all over the world in the same time.BELLA is designed effort of many years of research on laser plasma acceleration program drawing from the acceleration laser systems and integrated optical (Laser and Optical Accelerator Systems Integrated Studies - LOASIS) at Lawrence National Laboratory Berkeley under the U.S. Department of Energy. Here, the accelerator will typically use modulated electric field to accelerate charged particles, typically protons and electrons. Meanwhile, laser plasma accelerator generates electron density waves move through the thick a plasma environment. The laser or heat up a beam and gas drilling or will be led through a plasma layer of material is covered by a thin capillary tube located in a block of sapphire. Speed ​​limit is achieved when the wave traps are a few free electrons of the plasma and material acceleration them to extremely high levels of energy within a very short period.The initial experiments of the project will try to release powerful pulses to generate electron beams with energies 10 GeV (10 billion electronvolt) in a compact accelerator only about 1 m. By comparison, the previous technology requires a long linear accelerator 3.2 km - namely accelerator system at the Center Stanford Linear Accelerator to achieve the 50 GeV electron beam (50 billion electronvolt).The compact accelerators can open up new possibilities for scientists, universities and industry because they can use them as a tool in the high-end processors and Research Techniques . Thereby, the foundation for generation next particle accelerator in the high-energy physics.By: Gizmag