A team of researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (Berkeley Lab) have accelerated subatomic particles to the highest energies recorded to date at a compact particle accelerator.

The researchers sped up electrons inside a four inch tube of plasma to an energy of 4.25 giga-electron volts. The acceleration is 1000 times greater than traditional accelerators and establishes a new world record for a laser-plasma accelerator.

The accelerator works by using a specialized laser and a thin tube of plasma to get the particles up to speed. The laser creates a channel through the plasma along with waves that trap and accelerate free electrons. This action, according to the researchers, is “similar to the way that a surfer gains speed when skimming down the face of a wave.”

“This result requires exquisite control over the laser and the plasma,” says Dr. Wim Leemans. Lemons is director of the Accelerator Technology and Applied Physics Division at Berkeley Lab and lead author of a paper on the test which appears in the most recent issue of Physical Review Letters.

This is a vastly different approach than that used by the CERN’s Large Hadron Collider, which is probably the best known such device. The Large Hadron Collider uses modulating electric fields inside a metal cavity that is 17 miles in circumference.

While laser-plasma accelerators cannot match the large, traditional units like CERN’s yet, some physicists hope that, as the technology evolves, one day particle accelerators could fit on a desktop.

However, before you start moving your old printer to make room for a laser-plasma accelerator it is important to note that one of the most powerful lasers in the world was used to make the experiment world. The Berkeley Lab Laser Accelerator (BELLA) produces a quadrillion watts (one petawatt) of power.

“We’re forcing this laser beam into a 500 micron hole about 14 meters away. The BELLA laser beam has sufficiently high pointing stability to allow us to use it. With a lot of lasers, this never could have happened,” said Leemans.

The next step for the Berkeley team is to attempt to reach 10 giga-electron volts by attempting to more precisely control the plasma channel.