Discovery of ‘Lens’ Could Lead to Smaller Particle Accelerators

Researchers from USC, UCLA and Stanford have found a “lens” that can bend beams of particles in the same way that a prism bends a light beam. That lens is a plasma, a gas that is so hot that individual atoms break down into positively and negatively charged particles. Previously, the only way to bend a beam of particles was with powerful magnets. “Even though the [particle] beam is intense enough to blast through solid steel, it hit plasma that was about 1 million times less dense than air and bounced off,” said electrical engineer Thomas Katsouleas of USC. The discovery, reported in the May 3 Nature, could allow the design of smaller particle accelerators than are now possible. The Stanford Linear Accelerator, for example, is nearly two miles long.

--Compiled by Times medical writer Thomas H. Maugh II