7 ms·

Mini antimatter accelerator could rival the likes of the Large Hadron Collider

117 points by p4bl0 8y ago

saagarjha 8y ago
> Colliding electron and positron beams could have implications in fundamental physics. For example, they could create a higher rate of Higgs bosons than the LHC can, allowing physicists to better study its properties. Didn't the Large Electron-Positron Collider fail to detect evidence of the Higgs Boson?
- vichu 8y ago
  No, it succeeded in confirming the existence of the Higgs boson. In fact, that's largely the reason Higgs and Englert were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2013.
  - magicalhippo 8y ago
    LEP[1] did no such thing, you're talking about the LHC. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Electron%E2%80%93Positron_Collider https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Electron%E2%80%93Positro...
    - seiferteric 8y ago
      Wow, I misread the OPs comment as the LHC also and thought I was experiencing the mandela effect haha.
  - orbifold 8y ago
    No the LHC is a Large Hadron Collider, the previous collider was LEP a Large Electron Proton collider. They plan to build a linear electron proton collider similar to SLAC at some point.
    - leereeves 8y ago
      Positron (the antimatter counterpart to the electron) not Proton (the positive particle in the nucleus of ordinary atoms).
- magicalhippo 8y ago
  > Didn't the Large Electron-Positron Collider fail to detect evidence of the Higgs Boson? It didn't produce a negative result. In fact, they were seeing some small hints of something around 114 GeV right as they shut down for the LHC construction.
  - tempay 8y ago
    (Just for completeness) The hints at 114GeV in LEP were very subtle and have since been shown to be a statistical fluctuation (which is unsurprising). The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has observed the Higgs boson at 125GeV. This mass is too high for LEP to have ever seen without further upgrades to boost it's energy and there was no reason to expect it to be as close as it is to the LEP energy. It could easily have been 200GeV+ and well outside of LEP's capabilities. The advantage of the LHC is that is was capable of much higher energies due to being a proton collider (currently 13000GeV), though this comes at the cost of being "messier" to analyse the data. Additionally, continuing to run LEP to check would have further delayed the LHC which would have been very expensive.
- mnl 8y ago
  It got close, but it was limited by its design/diameter, such are the woes of synchroton radiation and accelerating the lighter charged particles. As far as I know they pushed its limits all they could (burning it) before shutting it down to replace it with the LHC. Too bad really, as the nicest accelerator for studying the properties of a Higgs is an e+e- collider and at some point at least one will/should be built. The LHC was built because something new had to show up at around 1TeV tops, it was either a Higgs boson or new physics (not all the energy of the pp collision is available for say a qq collision, because quarks are in a bound state, 14 TeV for pp at the LHC means approx 2 TeV for Higgs or new stuff).
- based2 8y ago
  https://home.cern/topics/higgs-boson https://home.cern/topics/higgs-boson "On 4 July 2012, the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN's Large Hadron Collider announced they had each observed a new particle in the mass region around 126 GeV. This particle is consistent with the Higgs boson predicted by the Standard Model." https://timeline.web.cern.ch/timelines/The-Large-Hadron-Collider https://timeline.web.cern.ch/timelines/The-Large-Hadron-Coll... https://home.cern/about/accelerators/large-electron-positron-collider https://home.cern/about/accelerators/large-electron-positron... "LEP – the largest electron-positron accelerator ever built – was dismantled in 2000. Its 27-kilometre tunnel now hosts the LHC" == http://medicinemag.net/science/2091/a-simple-antimatter-accelerator-can-rival-the-likes-of-the-big-hadron-collider.html http://medicinemag.net/science/2091/a-simple-antimatter-acce...
  - saagarjha 8y ago
    That says the LHC found it, not the LEP.
fenk85 8y ago
There seems to be a push lately in UK media of running newstories about "making Britain Great again", just last week we had a story about a new spaceport, this week there is stories without source about EU caving in to all brexiteer demands and so on All while the country is teetering on edge and could drag down its neighbours into another recession (selfmade this time), the NHS and local authorities remain in crisis, pound is weakening and inflation keeps going up. It sucks being stuck sort of speak between 2 of your good neighbours undergoing a mental breakdown and self harming
- Ntrails 8y ago
  This isn't the "UK media", this is a university trying to sell itself as doing some cool research / coming up with ideas (which, incidentally, is their job). If you really want to rant about the media spinning brexit lies then go ahead - you'll find plenty of willing listeners, but at least try and do it on a news story that actually fits your argument?
- kabouseng 8y ago
  "Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia." Sorry your comment just really made me think about the book 1984.
- piokoch 8y ago
  I would say there is push lately to picture UK situation in very black colors and I believe many of those claims are not really justified. Firstly, inflation is not going up, at least I couldn't find any evidence of that. Secondly, looking at the UK trade partners (for instance here http://www.worldstopexports.com/united-kingdoms-top-import-partners/ http://www.worldstopexports.com/united-kingdoms-top-import-p...) I see that UK has trade deficit will all EU countries, given the fact that UK has well develop economy they can in fact gain on leaving UK and relaying on bilateral deals (and I guess those who are bashing UK most will be first in the queue to start trading with them - Germany approach to Nord Stream that can be potentially dangerous for EU energy safety shows that when it comes to money, EU "unity" is thrown away quickly). Third, weakening pound is actually good for UK, the goods they produce are cheaper, so event if imported goods are more expensive at some point this will come to equilibrium. Fourth, UK has still hidden gems like tax havens here and there, including the one at the very center of London - quite convenient for all the rich people who, accidentally, have also a lot of political power and surely they would not like UK to be hurt too much. The only danger I see is that Scotland might try to gain independence and walk away with the oil taken from the North See, this would shrink UK domestic market and could indeed do some harm.
swebs 8y ago
>Sorry, the page you are looking for cannot be found. >It is possible this article may have been removed after being published. I can't seem to find an archive either.
- magicalhippo 8y ago
  This is the paper the article was based on/linked to: https://journals.aps.org/prab/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevAccelBeams.21.081301 https://journals.aps.org/prab/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevAccelB... PDF is surprisingly freely available.
  - jessriedel 8y ago
    It's true that many physics journals aren't open access, but essentially every paper written since 1992 is available on the arXiv, so not that big of restriction. Incidentally, the full text of the article is available in HTML too, which might be easier on mobile. https://journals.aps.org/prab/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevAccelBeams.21.081301#fulltext https://journals.aps.org/prab/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevAccelB...
    - magicalhippo 8y ago
      Sure, just refreshing not having to go the extra step and find it on arXiv :)
  - Steuard 8y ago
    I wonder if this is included in the SCOAP3 categories? (The vast majority of high-energy physics research is now open-access, due to collective negotiations between researchers, libraries, and publishers: https://scoap3.org/what-is-scoap3/ https://scoap3.org/what-is-scoap3/ )
danesparza 8y ago
I couldn't find it in the article (perhaps I overlooked it) -- but what do they mean by 'mini'? Especially considering the LHC has a circumference of 16 miles...
- jessriedel 8y ago
  The research is about an hypothetical alternative acceleration method, not the one used at the LHC.
- SiempreViernes 8y ago
  Further down someone posted the journal article[1] that describes a centimetre scale accelerator, that certainly counts as mini to me. [1]: https://journals.aps.org/prab/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevAccelBeams.21.081301 https://journals.aps.org/prab/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevAccelB...
- magicalhippo 8y ago
  They mention 100GeV/m gradients in the paper. If you could get that for 150m you'd have 15 TeV, comparable in energy to LHC (~14 TeV). As I understand it, you can't just build a pipe and get the full gradient for X meters. Rather you build a (relatively) small device which has the 100GeV/m gradient, and then you'd glue many such devices back-to-back. So you get some overhead from the interconnects etc. Still, with 10x overhead it's "only" one mile. The other point is that not all applications need TeV scale. For such applications maybe just a few stages would be sufficient. In which case it might be room-size or less.
magicalhippo 8y ago
Is this a variant of plasma wakefield accelerator, or something else? If so, staging is an issue from what I understand. Even at 100GeV/m, you'll need many stages to reach interesting TeV territory, so this is a crucial aspect if it wants to beat the LHC. Some relevant discussion on PhysicsForums: https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/two-stage-electron-wakefield-acceleration.948303/ https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/two-stage-electron-wak...
- tgragnato 8y ago
  I read the pdfs but didn't dig in too much, however the main difference seems to be the generation of a beam of positrons instead of electrons.
WorkLifeBalance 8y ago
Article has been removed?
mrfusion 8y ago
I’m really curious about the spacecraft propulsion applications of this.
- imglorp 8y ago
  I was about to laugh at this commenter for watching too much Star Trek but decided to read a little. Turns out Robert Forward did some work on this and it's not so bad. https://arxiv.org/abs/1205.2281 https://arxiv.org/abs/1205.2281
  - mrfusion 8y ago
    Ion drives are just particle accelerators so why not?
JulianMorrison 8y ago
Could you get it in a handgun form factor? Asking for a friend.
patagonia 8y ago
Explain it to me like I’m 5 please?
- HelloNurse 8y ago
  Computer simulations (without actual experiments) of improved advanced techniques to produce a "shower" of electrons and positrons by hitting a metal target with a laser, which are then accelerated and confined with a second laser driving plasma waves. The figures in the article, with lasers reflected by mirrors and particle beams going through the mirrors, suggest a very small but decently powerful single stage accelerator; using this technique as a building block for a large accelerrator isn't discussed.
jjgreen 8y ago
I’ve always imagined that the adjective was needed because under a desk somewhere, perhaps pedal powered, was a “small hadron collider” Robert E. A. Harvey, Comment on The Register, 28th December 2011 Prescient!
- hyperion2010 8y ago
  Try A. E. van Vogt, Slan, 1946 for even more precient.
- yborg 8y ago
  Dr. Raymond Stantz: You know, it just occurred to me that we really haven't had a successful test of this equipment. Dr. Egon Spengler: I blame myself. Dr. Peter Venkman: So do I. Dr. Raymond Stantz: Well, no sense in worrying about it now. Dr. Peter Venkman: Why worry? Each one of us is carrying an unlicensed nuclear accelerator on his back.
- InclinedPlane 8y ago
  There are lots of small hadron colliders. Hadrons are just composite particles made up of quarks and held together by the strong force. This includes "exotic" particles like mesons and high energy baryons, but it also includes the "mundane" baryons such as protons and neutrons. So technically any proton accelerator is a hadron collider. Which includes the first cyclotron, a proton accelerator built in 1932 that was only 27 inches across, a very "small hadron collider" indeed.
grpaceloidsop 8y ago
Can anyone explain why using antielectrons instead of electrons means the accelerator can be made smaller ?

117 points by p4bl0 8y ago

> Colliding electron and positron beams could have implications in fundamental physics. For example, they could create a higher rate of Higgs bosons than the LHC can, allowing physicists to better study its properties. Didn't the Large Electron-Positron Collider fail to detect evidence of the Higgs Boson?

vichu 8y ago
No, it succeeded in confirming the existence of the Higgs boson. In fact, that's largely the reason Higgs and Englert were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2013.
- magicalhippo 8y ago
  LEP[1] did no such thing, you're talking about the LHC. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Electron%E2%80%93Positron_Collider https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Electron%E2%80%93Positro...
  - seiferteric 8y ago
    Wow, I misread the OPs comment as the LHC also and thought I was experiencing the mandela effect haha.
- orbifold 8y ago
  No the LHC is a Large Hadron Collider, the previous collider was LEP a Large Electron Proton collider. They plan to build a linear electron proton collider similar to SLAC at some point.
  - leereeves 8y ago
    Positron (the antimatter counterpart to the electron) not Proton (the positive particle in the nucleus of ordinary atoms).
magicalhippo 8y ago
> Didn't the Large Electron-Positron Collider fail to detect evidence of the Higgs Boson? It didn't produce a negative result. In fact, they were seeing some small hints of something around 114 GeV right as they shut down for the LHC construction.
- tempay 8y ago
  (Just for completeness) The hints at 114GeV in LEP were very subtle and have since been shown to be a statistical fluctuation (which is unsurprising). The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has observed the Higgs boson at 125GeV. This mass is too high for LEP to have ever seen without further upgrades to boost it's energy and there was no reason to expect it to be as close as it is to the LEP energy. It could easily have been 200GeV+ and well outside of LEP's capabilities. The advantage of the LHC is that is was capable of much higher energies due to being a proton collider (currently 13000GeV), though this comes at the cost of being "messier" to analyse the data. Additionally, continuing to run LEP to check would have further delayed the LHC which would have been very expensive.
mnl 8y ago
It got close, but it was limited by its design/diameter, such are the woes of synchroton radiation and accelerating the lighter charged particles. As far as I know they pushed its limits all they could (burning it) before shutting it down to replace it with the LHC. Too bad really, as the nicest accelerator for studying the properties of a Higgs is an e+e- collider and at some point at least one will/should be built. The LHC was built because something new had to show up at around 1TeV tops, it was either a Higgs boson or new physics (not all the energy of the pp collision is available for say a qq collision, because quarks are in a bound state, 14 TeV for pp at the LHC means approx 2 TeV for Higgs or new stuff).
based2 8y ago
https://home.cern/topics/higgs-boson https://home.cern/topics/higgs-boson "On 4 July 2012, the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN's Large Hadron Collider announced they had each observed a new particle in the mass region around 126 GeV. This particle is consistent with the Higgs boson predicted by the Standard Model." https://timeline.web.cern.ch/timelines/The-Large-Hadron-Collider https://timeline.web.cern.ch/timelines/The-Large-Hadron-Coll... https://home.cern/about/accelerators/large-electron-positron-collider https://home.cern/about/accelerators/large-electron-positron... "LEP – the largest electron-positron accelerator ever built – was dismantled in 2000. Its 27-kilometre tunnel now hosts the LHC" == http://medicinemag.net/science/2091/a-simple-antimatter-accelerator-can-rival-the-likes-of-the-big-hadron-collider.html http://medicinemag.net/science/2091/a-simple-antimatter-acce...
- saagarjha 8y ago
  That says the LHC found it, not the LEP.

fenk85 8y ago

There seems to be a push lately in UK media of running newstories about "making Britain Great again", just last week we had a story about a new spaceport, this week there is stories without source about EU caving in to all brexiteer demands and so on All while the country is teetering on edge and could drag down its neighbours into another recession (selfmade this time), the NHS and local authorities remain in crisis, pound is weakening and inflation keeps going up. It sucks being stuck sort of speak between 2 of your good neighbours undergoing a mental breakdown and self harming

Ntrails 8y ago
This isn't the "UK media", this is a university trying to sell itself as doing some cool research / coming up with ideas (which, incidentally, is their job). If you really want to rant about the media spinning brexit lies then go ahead - you'll find plenty of willing listeners, but at least try and do it on a news story that actually fits your argument?
kabouseng 8y ago
"Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia." Sorry your comment just really made me think about the book 1984.
piokoch 8y ago
I would say there is push lately to picture UK situation in very black colors and I believe many of those claims are not really justified. Firstly, inflation is not going up, at least I couldn't find any evidence of that. Secondly, looking at the UK trade partners (for instance here http://www.worldstopexports.com/united-kingdoms-top-import-partners/ http://www.worldstopexports.com/united-kingdoms-top-import-p...) I see that UK has trade deficit will all EU countries, given the fact that UK has well develop economy they can in fact gain on leaving UK and relaying on bilateral deals (and I guess those who are bashing UK most will be first in the queue to start trading with them - Germany approach to Nord Stream that can be potentially dangerous for EU energy safety shows that when it comes to money, EU "unity" is thrown away quickly). Third, weakening pound is actually good for UK, the goods they produce are cheaper, so event if imported goods are more expensive at some point this will come to equilibrium. Fourth, UK has still hidden gems like tax havens here and there, including the one at the very center of London - quite convenient for all the rich people who, accidentally, have also a lot of political power and surely they would not like UK to be hurt too much. The only danger I see is that Scotland might try to gain independence and walk away with the oil taken from the North See, this would shrink UK domestic market and could indeed do some harm.

swebs 8y ago

>Sorry, the page you are looking for cannot be found. >It is possible this article may have been removed after being published. I can't seem to find an archive either.

magicalhippo 8y ago
This is the paper the article was based on/linked to: https://journals.aps.org/prab/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevAccelBeams.21.081301 https://journals.aps.org/prab/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevAccelB... PDF is surprisingly freely available.
- jessriedel 8y ago
  It's true that many physics journals aren't open access, but essentially every paper written since 1992 is available on the arXiv, so not that big of restriction. Incidentally, the full text of the article is available in HTML too, which might be easier on mobile. https://journals.aps.org/prab/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevAccelBeams.21.081301#fulltext https://journals.aps.org/prab/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevAccelB...
  - magicalhippo 8y ago
    Sure, just refreshing not having to go the extra step and find it on arXiv :)
- Steuard 8y ago
  I wonder if this is included in the SCOAP3 categories? (The vast majority of high-energy physics research is now open-access, due to collective negotiations between researchers, libraries, and publishers: https://scoap3.org/what-is-scoap3/ https://scoap3.org/what-is-scoap3/ )

danesparza 8y ago

I couldn't find it in the article (perhaps I overlooked it) -- but what do they mean by 'mini'? Especially considering the LHC has a circumference of 16 miles...

jessriedel 8y ago
The research is about an hypothetical alternative acceleration method, not the one used at the LHC.
SiempreViernes 8y ago
Further down someone posted the journal article[1] that describes a centimetre scale accelerator, that certainly counts as mini to me. [1]: https://journals.aps.org/prab/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevAccelBeams.21.081301 https://journals.aps.org/prab/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevAccelB...
magicalhippo 8y ago
They mention 100GeV/m gradients in the paper. If you could get that for 150m you'd have 15 TeV, comparable in energy to LHC (~14 TeV). As I understand it, you can't just build a pipe and get the full gradient for X meters. Rather you build a (relatively) small device which has the 100GeV/m gradient, and then you'd glue many such devices back-to-back. So you get some overhead from the interconnects etc. Still, with 10x overhead it's "only" one mile. The other point is that not all applications need TeV scale. For such applications maybe just a few stages would be sufficient. In which case it might be room-size or less.

magicalhippo 8y ago

Is this a variant of plasma wakefield accelerator, or something else? If so, staging is an issue from what I understand. Even at 100GeV/m, you'll need many stages to reach interesting TeV territory, so this is a crucial aspect if it wants to beat the LHC. Some relevant discussion on PhysicsForums: https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/two-stage-electron-wakefield-acceleration.948303/ https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/two-stage-electron-wak...

tgragnato 8y ago
I read the pdfs but didn't dig in too much, however the main difference seems to be the generation of a beam of positrons instead of electrons.

WorkLifeBalance 8y ago

Article has been removed?

mrfusion 8y ago

I’m really curious about the spacecraft propulsion applications of this.

imglorp 8y ago
I was about to laugh at this commenter for watching too much Star Trek but decided to read a little. Turns out Robert Forward did some work on this and it's not so bad. https://arxiv.org/abs/1205.2281 https://arxiv.org/abs/1205.2281
- mrfusion 8y ago
  Ion drives are just particle accelerators so why not?

JulianMorrison 8y ago

Could you get it in a handgun form factor? Asking for a friend.

patagonia 8y ago

Explain it to me like I’m 5 please?

HelloNurse 8y ago
Computer simulations (without actual experiments) of improved advanced techniques to produce a "shower" of electrons and positrons by hitting a metal target with a laser, which are then accelerated and confined with a second laser driving plasma waves. The figures in the article, with lasers reflected by mirrors and particle beams going through the mirrors, suggest a very small but decently powerful single stage accelerator; using this technique as a building block for a large accelerrator isn't discussed.

jjgreen 8y ago

I’ve always imagined that the adjective was needed because under a desk somewhere, perhaps pedal powered, was a “small hadron collider” Robert E. A. Harvey, Comment on The Register, 28th December 2011 Prescient!

hyperion2010 8y ago
Try A. E. van Vogt, Slan, 1946 for even more precient.
yborg 8y ago
Dr. Raymond Stantz: You know, it just occurred to me that we really haven't had a successful test of this equipment. Dr. Egon Spengler: I blame myself. Dr. Peter Venkman: So do I. Dr. Raymond Stantz: Well, no sense in worrying about it now. Dr. Peter Venkman: Why worry? Each one of us is carrying an unlicensed nuclear accelerator on his back.
InclinedPlane 8y ago
There are lots of small hadron colliders. Hadrons are just composite particles made up of quarks and held together by the strong force. This includes "exotic" particles like mesons and high energy baryons, but it also includes the "mundane" baryons such as protons and neutrons. So technically any proton accelerator is a hadron collider. Which includes the first cyclotron, a proton accelerator built in 1932 that was only 27 inches across, a very "small hadron collider" indeed.

grpaceloidsop 8y ago

Can anyone explain why using antielectrons instead of electrons means the accelerator can be made smaller ?