A team of researchers from the U.S.  Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Lab have used one of the world’s most powerful lasers to speed up particles to the highest energies ever recorded by a compact accelerator. Researchers used a specialized petawatt laser and plashma, a charged particle gas, to encourage the particles to speed up.

Study results appear in the newest issue of Physical Review Letters.

Specifically, the researchers used a nine-centimeter long tube of plasma, with which they sped up the electrons to an energy of 4.25 giga-electron volts. Such a poweful acceleration over a short distance indicates an energy gradient 1000 times higher than traditional particle accelerators, setting a global energy record for laser-plasma accelerators.

The paper’s lead author, Dr. Wim Leemans, director of the Accelerator Technology and Applied Physics Division at Berkeley Lab, said in a statement, “This result requires exquisite control over the laser and the plasma.”

Traditional particle accelerators, including the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, use a metal cavity to modulate electric fields in an attempt to speed up particles. This technique is limited to approximately 100 mega-electron volts per meter before the metal breaks down.

In contrast, laser-plasma accelerators, such as the one in this experiment, rely on a pulse of laser light, which they inject into a short, thin tube filled with plasma. The laser then forms a channel through the plasma along with waves that capture free electrons and speed them up to high energies.

According to the NDT Resource Center, subatomic particles are particles that are smaller than the atom.