If that seems crazy, look at what’s happened with electron beam generation. However, as the laser designs get better, it should eventually be possible to build such a device on the desktop. Unlike conventional methods, the only large part of this accelerator design is the laser system which currently takes about 25 square meters of space. Those low-energy positrons can be formed into a high-energy beam. The gamma ray however is unstable and converts into a low-energy positron/electron pair. However, that additional energy has to go somewhere, so it creates a gamma ray. The electron flux bounces off a metal target which causes them to decelerate. The second stage is where things get interesting. This stage creates a shower or flux of electrons. One creates a high-energy electron flux using the conventional a conventional ELPA process. is borrowing ideas from electron laser-plasma accelerators (ELPA) - a technology that has allowed electron accelerators to shrink to mere inches - and turned it around to create positrons instead. Not something you are going to build in your garage this year. Today, generating high-energy positron beams requires an RF accelerator - miles of track with powerful electromagnets, klystrons, and microwave cavities. He hasn’t built a prototype, but he did publish some proof-of-concept simulation work in Physical Review Accelerators and Beams. He’s got a new design that could bring antimatter beams out of the lab and onto the desktop. There are well over 200 electron accelerators in labs around the world, but only a handful that work with positrons, the electron’s anti-counterpart. The truth is, antimatter is a little less exotic than it appears on TV, but for a variety of reasons there hasn’t been nearly as much practical research done with it. If you watch Star Trek, you will know one way to get rid of pesky aliens is to vent antimatter.
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