3 ms·

If you're curious about the current state of the art see the high inte sity gamma source: http://faculty.virginia.edu/PSTP2013/Talks/HIGSCapabilities_PSTP2013_v

If you're curious about the current state of the art see the high inte sity gamma source: http://faculty.virginia.edu/PSTP2013/Talks/HIGSCapabilities_PSTP2013_v2.pdf http://faculty.virginia.edu/PSTP2013/Talks/HIGSCapabilities_... This isnt a gamma laser because the gamma rays arent coherent, but they can be polarized more than 99%. The free electron laser makes optical laser light in a big cavity with dielectric mirrors, the next electron bunch in the storage ring collides with it and scatters it up to MeV level of energy. Flux and energy resolution can be exchanged by changing the diameter of the gamma collimator and the operating mode. Its generally something like 10^7 gammas/s for energies near 15 MeV with 3% resolution.

DoofusOfDeath 7y ago
Newbie question: Aren't gamma rays just a particular frequency range of e.m.? If so, why would they be any less capable of coherence than other e.m. frequencies?
- wbl 7y ago
  You can make them coherent but it's technically hard.
- yummypaint 7y ago
  That is true that photons are photons, the trick is getting them to be coherent in the first place. Optical lasers use stimulated emission in some form. I presume that positronium from the article is able to somehow also undergo stimulated emission in the form of the particles anihilating and making 511 kev photons. The distinction between that and how HIGS works is that HIGS is effectively bouncing laser light off a fast moving mirror made of electrons, which actually destroys the coherence, even though the resulting gamma rays are still very similar.