We’re used to thinking of particle accelerators as huge,
expensive instruments like the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.
These beamlines can either be circular or linear
and can be miles long.
But the particle accelerator of the future might look pretty different.
It's built into a microchip.
This groundbreaking miniature accelerator is just 30 micrometers long,
which is about the width of a hair on your head.
So how the heck does it work?
And how can it possibly be so small?
I mean, what is this, a particle accelerator for ants?!
Well, particle accelerators do just that—they accelerate particles.
They take beams of charged particles, like electrons or protons or others,
and speed them up and focus those particles using magnetic and/or electric fields.
This beam of now super fast particles can hurtle through a vacuum in the accelerator
at nearly the speed of light until they crash into another beam of charged particles or a fixed target.
The resulting data can then help us understand more about the nature and behavior of subatomic particles,
which in turn can tell us a lot about chemistry,
biology, materials science...
basically, everything around us.
But an intrepid team out of Stanford and SLAC is the very first to have produced a functioning prototype
of a miniature particle accelerator on a silicon chip.
The researchers etched a nanoscale channel into their silicon chip
and sealed it in a vacuum—
just like is necessary on a big accelerator.
They accelerated electrons along this channel using infrared laser pulses—100,000 pulses per second!
Granted, the electrons were accelerated only to a fraction of the speed that the big versions get up to,
but no big magnets or electric fields were required!
They used infrared light because it has a tiny wavelength: about one-tenth the length of a human hair.
That’s why its energy could accelerate electrons within the 30-micrometer runway in the chip—
a tiny wavelength for a tiny distance.
This design required some brand-new engineering on the team’s part,
who actually worked backwards, starting with their end goal.
They knew what they wanted the light to do to the electrons, so they ran inverse design algorithms.
This helped them come up with the layout of the nanoscale structures within the chip
that would let them achieve their goal.
This reverse engineering technique produced something that not only works, but is also remarkably beautiful.
While it is just a prototype,
this microchip particle accelerator is part of a larger effort
called the Accelerator on a Chip International Program, or ACHIP.
Because as it turns out, scaling down accelerator technology is pretty important.
Our normal, huge particle accelerators have helped us develop the technologies we use
in radiation treatment for cancers, among many other medical applications.
So, although this prototype hasn’t reached anything close to the accelerations we can achieve
on those bigger versions,
miniaturizing this tech could eventually have a big impact in medicine.
The team is already working to achieve higher particle accelerations
within a slightly larger microchip by the end of 2020.
One of the collaborators is even working on a development
that would take these high-energy electrons
and channel them into the human body.
This could focus treatment for something like a tumor to a much more precise area,
providing more effective medical care with less potentially harmful side effects.
The team compares the sizing down of particle accelerators to the changes
that computers have gone through since the days when a computer filled a huge room,
to being able to hold one in the palm of your hand.
Further development in this field could make accelerator technology—
which is currently only available at precious few facilities—
much more accessible to research teams around the world.
Imagine—pocket particle accelerators, helping us probe the fundamentals of our universe.
What else do you think a micro-accelerator could help us do?
Let us know in the comments below and subscribe to Seeker for all of your particle physics news.
Check out this video here for more highly accelerated science
and as always, thanks for watching.
I’ll see you next time!