Future Technology Trends

The Large Hadron Collider may be on the verge discovering new particles.  Enormous amounts of protons are currently zipping along the 17 mile accelerator and smashing into one another.  As they annihilate, they generate an intricate shower of subatomic matter.  Many physicists have been fairly modest when predicting the exact number that the machine may actually uncover.  The higgs boson is the leading contender that is expected to be seen at the energy levels being probed.  Other light supersymmetric particles are possible as well.  The neutralino, for instance, might help explain dark matter that can normally only be detected only due gravitational effects.  While the LHC is an engineering marvel that surpasses almost any other thing that man has ever built, it is still not powerful enough to solve as many mysteries as physicists would like.  Quite a few theoreticians expect to see physics that doesn’t conform to the standard model at the LHC.  However, ever higher energies will be needed in the future to rule out many of  the vacua that are inherent to the leading contender for a TOE i.e. string theory.  There are limitations to how fast protons (or anything else) can be accelerated using existing technology.  A novel way of speeding up specific types of matter in less space is known as laser wakefield acceleration.  Future particle accelerators may take advantage of this method in order to attain a higher velocity.  

History and Outlook of Plasma Acceleration (PDF)

The laser wakefield acceleration (LWFA) along with the now available laser technology allows us to look at TeV physics both in leptons and hadrons.  Near future proof-of-principle experiments for a collider as well as high energy frontier experiments without a collider paradigm are suggested. The intense laser can also contribute to other fundamental physics explorations such as those of dark matter and dark energy candidates.  Finally the combination of intense laser and laser-accelerated particles (electrons, hadrons, gammas) provides a further avenue of fundamental research.

Laser acceleration towards PeV

We have presented the possibility that utilizing the existing large energy lasers or its future extension, we can chart out a scientific path to reach for PeV energies by the laser acceleration. The laser wakefield acceleration (LWFA) is capable of very compact and intense acceleration far beyond the conventional accelerator approach. Reaching such energies as PeV appears only possible by such a new enabling method

Being able to reach petaelectronvolt energy could lead to many new discoveries in physics (1 PeV = 1000 TeV, 1 TeV = 1000 GeV).  It seems like somewhat of an overly optimistic appraisal.  The LHC is designed to reach 14 TeV.  However, cosmic rays have shown that nature is quite capable on her own to attain extreme kinetic momentum.  The CERN collaboration appears to be more modest as to what they want to do with related technology in the future.  Laser (or plasma) wakefield would be used to propel electrons.

This project would be the first beam-driven wakefield acceleration experiment in Europe, and the first proton-driven plasma-wakefield acceleration experiment worldwide. We have set as an initial goal the demonstration of 1 GeV energy gain for electrons in 10 m of plasma. A proposal for reaching 100 GeV within 100 m of plasma will be developed using results from the initial round of experimentation

Laser Wakefield and Fundamental Physics Flash Presentation and PDF file.