The compact photon source, which is being developed by Berkeley Lab, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and Idaho National Laboratory, is tunable, allowing users to produce MeV photons within very specific narrow ranges of energy, an improvement that will allow the fabrication of highly sensitive yet safe detection instruments to reach where ordinary passive handheld sensors cannot, and to identify nuclear material such as uranium-235 hidden behind thick shielding. "The ability to choose the photon energy is what would allow increased sensitivity and safety. Only the photons that produce the best signal and least noise would be delivered," explains project lead Cameron Geddes, a staff scientist at the Berkeley Lab Laser Accelerator (BELLA) Center.
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To make a tunable photon source that is also compact, Geddes and his team will use one of BELLA's laser plasma accelerators (LPAs) instead of a conventional accelerator to produce a high-intensity electron beam. By operating in a plasma, or ionized gas, LPAs can accelerate electrons 10,000 times "harder" or faster than a conventional accelerator. "That means we can achieve the energy that would take tens of meters in a conventional accelerator within a centimeter using our LPA technology," Geddes says.
I've mentioned about this type of advanced accelerator scheme a few times on here, so you can do a search to find out more.
Now, to my rant. I hate the title, first of all. It perpetuates the popular misunderstanding that accelerators means "high energy physics". Notice that the production of light source in this case has no connection to high energy physics field of study, and it isn't for such a purpose. The article did mention that this scheme is also being developed as a possible means to generate future high-energy electrons for particle colliders. That's fine, but this scheme is independent of such a purpose, and as can be seen, can be used as a light source for many different uses outside of high energy physics.
Unfortunately, the confusion is also perpetuated by the way funding for accelerator science is done within the DOE. Even though more accelerators in the US is used as light sources (synchrotron and FEL facilities) than they are for particle colliders, all the funding for accelerator science is still being handled by DOE's Office of Science High Energy Physics Division. DOE's Basic Energy Sciences, which funds synchrotron light sources and SLAC's LCLS, somehow would not consider funding advancement in accelerator science, even though they greatly benefit from this field. NSF, on the other hand, has started to separate out Accelerator Science funding from High Energy Physics funding, even though the separation so far hasn't been clean.
What this means is that, with the funding in HEP in the US taking a dive the past several years, funding in Accelerator Science suffered the same collateral damage, even though Accelerator Science is actually independent of HEP and has vital needs in many areas of physics.
Articles such as this should make it clear that this is not a high energy physics application, and not fall into the trap of associating accelerator science with HEP.
Zz.
The compact photon
source, which is being developed by Berkeley Lab, Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory, and Idaho National Laboratory, is tunable, allowing
users to produce MeV photons within very specific narrow ranges of
energy, an improvement that will allow the fabrication of highly
sensitive yet safe detection instruments to reach where ordinary passive
handheld sensors cannot, and to identify nuclear material
such as uranium-235 hidden behind thick shielding. "The ability to
choose the photon energy is what would allow increased sensitivity and
safety. Only the photons that produce the best signal and least noise
would be delivered," explains project lead Cameron Geddes, a staff
scientist at the Berkeley Lab Laser Accelerator (BELLA) Center.
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-04-national-high-energy-physics.html#jCp
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-04-national-high-energy-physics.html#jCp
The compact photon
source, which is being developed by Berkeley Lab, Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory, and Idaho National Laboratory, is tunable, allowing
users to produce MeV photons within very specific narrow ranges of
energy, an improvement that will allow the fabrication of highly
sensitive yet safe detection instruments to reach where ordinary passive
handheld sensors cannot, and to identify nuclear material
such as uranium-235 hidden behind thick shielding. "The ability to
choose the photon energy is what would allow increased sensitivity and
safety. Only the photons that produce the best signal and least noise
would be delivered," explains project lead Cameron Geddes, a staff
scientist at the Berkeley Lab Laser Accelerator (BELLA) Center.
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-04-national-high-energy-physics.html#jCp
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-04-national-high-energy-physics.html#jCp
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