Berkeley Lab

GeV electron beams from a cm-scale accelerator

1 GeV in only 3.3 cm

1 GeV in only 3.3 cm

October 2006—BELLA Center researchers, together with colleagues from the University of Oxford, have accelerated electrons to more than 1 GeV in only 3.3 cm. This is the highest energy achieved with laser-wakefield acceleration, which harnesses the electric field of a plasma wave driven by a laser beam. Results have been published in “GeV electron beams from a cm-scale accelerator”, W. P. Leemans, B. Nagler, A. J. Gonsalves, Cs. Toth, K. Nakamura, C.G.R. Geddes, E. Esarey, C.B. Schroeder, and S.M. Hooker, Nature Physics 2 (October 2006), pp. 696-699. More information can be found in this LBNL press release. The technical paper describing the achievement is here.