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CERN\u2019s mini-accelerator AWAKE was built to demonstrate plasma wakefield acceleration.Credit: Julien Marius Ordan\/CERN\/Science Photo Library<\/p>\n
Physicists are sketching the designs of a particle accelerator that would be radically smaller and cheaper than existing facilities. The technique behind these designs, known as wakefield acceleration<\/a>, has been studied since the 1970s but is now making rapid advances.<\/p>\n CERN\u2019s pioneering mini-accelerator passes first test<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n Physicists use accelerators to study particles in intense detail, and, they hope, to discover new ones. Now that scientists are thrashing out plans for the next flagship particle colliders<\/a> \u2014 to follow on from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, Europe\u2019s particle-physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland \u2014 wakefield researchers are making their case to be involved. \u201cNow is where the rubber meets the road,\u201d says Spencer Gessner, a particle physicist at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in Menlo Park, California, and part of the group working on a design<\/a> for a wakefield accelerator.<\/p>\n \u201cWe need to make that transition from interesting science to building accelerators,\u201d says Patric Muggli, an accelerator physicist at the Max Planck Institute for Physics in Munich, Germany.<\/p>\n Wakefield acceleration involves electrons surfing on a wave of plasma \u2014 an ionized gas \u2014 that is created either with another particle beam or with a laser. Conventional accelerator cavities \u2014 such as those at the LHC, which use electromagnetic fields to propel particles \u2014 are prone to sparking at high field strengths. But plasma-filled modules can withstand extreme fields. This means that over centimetre distances, wakefield technology can achieve an acceleration 1,000 times greater than conventional techniques can. If applied at scale, that could shrink an accelerator from kilometres to metres.<\/p>\n Collider design<\/p>\n Among the major hurdles for wakefield accelerators will be stitching together multiple chambers to boost particles to collider energies, and creating uniform and identical beams. Other challenges will be mastering how to accelerate positrons \u2014 the harder-to-handle antimatter counterparts of electrons \u2014 and deciding which kind of wakefield accelerator to pitch. \u201cWe have to make up our own mind,\u201d says Muggli.<\/p>\n Over the next four years, the researchers plan to work on technical challenges and to select a single, most promising, method as the basis of a demonstrator machine ten years from now, says Gessner. \u201cOur goal is to make something very concrete.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/d41586-025-01181-1_16099226.jpg\"\/)
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