'Flying focus' laser overcomes key limitation in plasma-based particle accelerators

Phys.org reports on a Nature Physics study showing a major advance in laser-plasma accelerators. Researchers successfully accelerated electrons to more than twice the energy that physics had predicted as the maximum limit—and they did it over the same distance as conventional systems. They achieved this using a specially engineered laser pulse called a flying focus, which gets around a longstanding barrier called dephasing.

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