Getting a bright light in a small space is harder than it sounds – but these scientists may have done it.
A new method of producing an ultra-bright light which breaks traditional laws of particle physics could potentially spark a technological revolution.
The ultra-bright light, a form of ‘coherent light’, is created by particles moving in synchrony rather than independently. This synchrony creates incredibly fast, intense pulses that operate on a scale of atto-seconds – or one thousandth of a millionth of a billionth of a second.
While machines that can currently create ultra-bright light are miles long, scientists have now produced plans for a light source that can fit into a single room. The discovery could create a “mini-societal, technological and scientific revolution”, the researchers behind the development told BBC Science Focus.
In a move set to radically improve global healthcare and future technology, the new ultra-bright light machine could make X-rays and radiotherapy treatments cheaper in future, and enable the creation of powerful computer chips.
It could even create ultra-bright light that can probe the dense matter of stars and planets, deepening our understanding of cosmic behaviour, according to researchers.
How is ultra-bright light produced?
Normal light sources, as emitted from lightbulbs or light from the Sun, produce a white light in which photons move independently. This ‘incoherent light’ is like “a loosely tuned radio, where we mostly hear static noise,” according to the authors. By comparison, the synchronised photons in coherent light are more like a “finely tuned orchestra”.
In the study, published in journal Nature Photonics, the scientists used advanced computer simulations to measure the unique properties of quasiparticles formed by groups of electrons moving in synchrony. Quasiparticles are created by a collection of particles acting together in a way that enables them to be treated like a single particle.
This class of particles exhibit a number of intriguing properties, can theoretically move at any speed (even faster than the speed of light), and can even withstand the powerful forces that surround a black hole.
The authors compare the motion of the quasiparticles in their experiment to a Mexican wave: the wave itself can travel around a stadium faster than any individual human could, but each individual participant stays in the same place.
Similarly, the scientists observed each individual electron making simple movements. But when they joined together, the collective motion combined to create an electron Mexican wave that can move faster than light. The whole system forms a quasiparticle that can be thought of as a single electron capable of emitting highly synchronised photons, and thus extremely bright light.
Existing coherent light sources are huge, with most far too large to use in most labs and hospitals. For example, the star-probing Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) in the US is over 3km (1.9 miles) long.
However, as the new study demonstrated, ultra-fast coherent light could be produced in a single room.
The new discovery is part of a global effort to make ultra-bright light sources broadly available. The Nobel Prize in Physics this year was recently awarded to scientists who produced atto-second light beams.
The researchers behind this new study aim to do the same, but using a much more compact machine. They say that this would mark the beginning of widespread technological and scientific advances across the world.
About our experts
Dr Jorge Vieira is an Assistant Professor of Physics at the Instituto Superior Técnico (IST) in Portugal. His research has previously been published in the journals Nature Physics, Nature Communications, and Physical Review Letters.
Dr John Palastro is a Senior Scientist in Plasma Physics at the University of Rochester in the US. His research has previously been published in the journals Nature, Physics of Plasma, and Physical Review.
Dr Bernardo Malaca is a PhD candidate at the IST in Portugal. He is the first author of this study, and his research has been published in the conference paper Laser Acceleration of Electrons, Protons, and Ions VII and in the journal Physical Review Research.
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