Federal funding will enable University of Rochester scientists, in collaboration with their European partners, to explore the feasibility of developing coherent light sources beyond X-rays.
Since the invention of the laser in the 1960s, scientists have been striving to enhance its peak power and develop devices that emit coherent light at increasingly shorter wavelengths. These advancements are aimed at improving image resolution and facilitating the exploration of quantum nuclear states.
Progress has been made with regard to peak power, most notably with the invention of chirped pulse amplification by University of Rochester researchers in the 1980s, a breakthrough that garnered the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2018. However, developing lasers that produce very-high-energy light, such as gamma rays, has remained elusive. That’s in part because “coherent” light waves are in sync with each other, creating a stronger effect in combination. This effect is harder to achieve at higher-photon energies. And while lasers can now produce coherent light in the visible, ultraviolet, and x-ray ranges of the electromagnetic spectrum, doing so beyond the x-ray range—which is where gamma rays exist—remains a challenge.
To overcome this obstacle, Rochester researchers secured National Science Foundation (NSF) funding in collaboration with colleagues from ELI Beamlines in the Czech Republic to investigate the coherence properties of the radiation emitted when dense bunches of electrons collide with a strong laser field. In doing so, the researchers aim to understand how to produce coherent gamma rays and use these new radiation sources for research and applications to create antimatter, study nuclear processes, and image dense objects or materials, such as scanning shipping containers.
“The ability to make coherent gamma rays would be a scientific revolution in creating new kinds of light sources, similar to how the discovery and development of visible light and x-ray sources changed our fundamental understanding of the atomic world,” says Antonino Di Piazza, a professor of physics at the University of Rochester and a distinguished scientist at the University’s Laboratory for Laser Energetics, who is the lead investigator on the NSF grant.
US–Europe connections facilitate laser science advancements
The project combines the theoretical expertise of Rochester scientists with the theoretical and experimental capabilities of ELI Beamlines in the Czech Republic, strengthening ties between the US and Europe in the field of high-intensity lasers.
The scientists will use complex theories and high-tech experiments to study how fast-moving electrons interact with the laser to emit high-energy light. They’ll start by looking at simpler cases, such as how one or two electrons emit light, before moving on to more complicated scenarios with many electrons, to produce coherent gamma rays. Such a result builds on the work of scientists who have created coherent X-rays, including the teams at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, European XFEL, and SACLA.
“We are not the first scientists who have tried creating gamma rays in this way,” says Di Piazza. “But we are doing so using a fully quantum theory—quantum electrodynamics—which is an advanced approach to addressing this problem.”
If successful, this project could lead to the creation of a gamma-ray-free electron laser, a major goal in the scientific community, according to Di Piazza. “Of course,” he says, “step one is to show that the science is possible before building such a device.”
This work will also contribute to advancing the science case for a potential future NSF OPAL high-power laser user facility at the University of Rochester, another NSF-funded project on which Di Piazza is a co-principal investigator, and which has the potential to be a unique open-access resource for the global scientific community. NSF OPAL is part of NSF X-lites, an international network of networks studying extreme light in intensity, time, and space formed to address the grand challenge questions defined at the frontiers of laser-matter coherent interactions at the shortest distances, highest intensities, and fastest times.
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3 Comments
NSF OPAL is part of NSF X-lites, an international network of networks studying extreme light in intensity, time, and space formed to address the grand challenge questions defined at the frontiers of laser-matter coherent interactions at the shortest distances, highest intensities, and fastest times.
VERY GOOD!
Please ask researchers to think deeply:
1. What are the shortest distances, highest intensities, and fastest times in the universe?
2. What is the synchronous effect of topological vortices?
Scientific research guided by correct theories can help humanity avoid detours, failures, and pomposity. Please witness the exemplary collaboration between theoretical physicists and experimentalists (https://scitechdaily.com/microscope-spacecrafts-most-precise-test-of-key-component-of-the-theory-of-general-relativity/#comment-854286). Some people in contemporary physics has always lived in a self righteous children’s story world. Whose values have been overturned by such a comical and ridiculous reality?
From Physical Review Letters (PRL), to Nature, and Science, even the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), the so-called academic journals firmly believe that two high-dimensional spacetime objects (such as two sets of cobalt-60) rotating in opposite directions can be transformed into two objects that mirror each other, and that the asymmetry between the amount of created matter and antimatter led to the matter-dominated Universe as we know it today.
Does the facts tell the so-called academic journals that two sets of cobalt-60 rotating in opposite directions can be transformed into two objects that mirror each other? Does mathematics tell the so-called academic journals that matter and antimatter are asymmetric? When physics no longer believes in facts and mathematics, it is no different from theology.
Naked walkers never consider themselves ugly, but rather consider themselves cool.
Space has physical properties of zero viscosity and absolute incompressibility. Zero viscosity and absolute incompressibility are physical characteristics of ideal fluids. The space with ideal fluid physical characteristics forms vortices via topological phase transitions, which is not difficult to understand mathematically. Once the topological vortex is formed, it occupies space and maintains its presence in time. This is the transition from chaos to order via two bidirectional coupled continuous chaotic systems.
Symmetry of topological vortex can be used to explore particle behavior under spatial, temporal, and quantum reversals, involving quantum gravity, discrete and continuous changes. It underpins the consistency of natural laws and experiment reproducibility.
The physical phenomena observed in scientific experiments are always just appearances, not the natural essence of things. The natural essence of things needs to be extracted and sublimated based on natural phenomena via mathematical theories. After understanding and mastering the natural essence of things, humans can predict more possible natural phenomena, and even manipulate and implement them.
From cosmic accretion disks to particle spins, topological vortex fractal structures are ubiquitous. Symmetry of topological vortex can be used to explore particle behavior under spatial, temporal, and quantum reversals, involving quantum gravity, discrete and continuous changes. It underpins the consistency of natural laws and experiment reproducibility. Why does physics today turn a blind eye to topological vortex fractal structures?
Please ask researchers to think deeply:
1. How does light interact with human senses?
2. How do waves interact with human senses?
3. How do particles interact with human senses?
3. How does the material world interact with human senses?
4. Can the interaction that the human body cannot perceive be equivalent to non-existent?
Mathematics is the main environment for modeling problems in other areas. Observations and experiments, theory, and modeling reinforce each other and together lead to our understanding of scientific phenomena.
I think it is unwise to develop gamma ray lasers given the current state of the world. Such lasers would make it much easier to access and harness nuclear energies from ordinary matter. While gamma ray lasers could make nuclear fusion and interstellar travel possible, they would also make it far easier to make nuclear weapons and start nuclear detonations without even having a complex bomb apparatus or using purified uranium. Society would need to become radically pacifistic…on the cultural and even spiritual level…to the extent where any device designed to kill another human being (from samurai swords to nukes) would be morally repugnant to the average person…in order for such technology to be compatible with our existence. The ability to start a nuclear explosion with a laser pointer should not be in anyone’s interest until we got our minds a right.