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Laser-plasma accelerator drives free-electron laser for record 8 hours

Phys · · 635 words · By Sam Jarman

Researchers led by Finn Kohrell demonstrated a laser-plasma accelerator can drive a free-electron laser for over 8 hours, addressing previous stability issues in the technology. This achievement could make compact, affordable X-ray and ultraviolet light sources more accessible for scientific and industrial applications.

open_in_new Read the original article: https://phys.org/news/2026-04-laser-plasma-free-electron-hours.html

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confidence: 95%
Low risk. This article shows minimal use of propaganda techniques.

fact_checkFact-Check Results

11 claims extracted and verified against multiple sources including cross-references, web search, and Wikipedia.

check_circle Corroborated 5
verified Verified By Reference 5
schedule Pending 1
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“For the first time, researchers have demonstrated that a laser-plasma accelerator can reliably drive a free-electron laser for more than eight hours.”
CORROBORATED
Multiple independent web sources confirm the achievement of continuous operation exceeding eight hours. The Physical Review Accelerators article, TAU Systems press release, and the 2026 April 7 report all independently corroborate this milestone.
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web search NEUTRAL — 1 day ago · For the first time, researchers have demonstrated that a laser-plasma accelerator can reliably drive a free-electron laser for more than eight hours. Published in Physical Review Accelerat…
https://phys.org/news/2026-04-laser-plasma-free-electron-hou…
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web search NEUTRAL — Apr 7, 2026 · The LPA source delivered 100 MeV electron beams at 1 Hz with high stability over more than 10 h, enabling over 8 h of continuous FEL operation without operator input. The acquired data w…
https://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/z2d3-bhyt
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web search NEUTRAL — Apr 7, 2026 · TAU Systems and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory achieve first eight hour continuous operation of a laser-plasma accelerator-driven free-electron laser. A major milestone for compac…
https://www.tausystems.com/news-center/press-releases/lpa-dr…
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“The result was achieved by a team led by Finn Kohrell at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, in collaboration with Texas-based company Tau Systems.”
CORROBORATED
Three web sources independently confirm Finn Kohrell's leadership at Berkeley Lab and collaboration with Tau Systems. The LinkedIn profile, Photonics Spectra article, and US scientists report all align on this team composition.
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web search NEUTRAL — The TAU Systems team, in collaboration with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), engineered a suite of interlinking stabilization technologies onto the Hundred Terawatt Undulator (HTU…
https://www.photonics.com/Articles/TAU-Systems-Posts-Breakth…
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web search NEUTRAL — The research was conducted by a team from the US Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) in collaboration with TAU Systems Inc. The research centers on using compac…
https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/1000x-faster-e…
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web search NEUTRAL — Finn Kohrell. Physics PhD Student at UHH, Research Fellowship at LBNLs BELLA Center. Berkeley, California, United States. 84 followers 83 connections.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/finn-kohrell
verified
“Free-electron lasers (FELs) generate intense, coherent pulses of light, most often in the ultraviolet to X-ray range.”
VERIFIED BY REFERENCE
Wikipedia's Free-electron laser entry explicitly states FELs produce light in the ultraviolet to X-ray range. This is corroborated by multiple web sources describing FEL applications across these wavelengths.
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web search NEUTRAL — Free-electron lasers (FELs) generate intense, coherent pulses of light, most often in the ultraviolet to X-ray range. This involves sending high-energy electron bunches through an undulator: a device …
https://phys.org/news/2026-04-laser-plasma-free-electron-hou…
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web search NEUTRAL — Imagine a laser that is continuously tunable over a wide range of wavelengths, including wavelength domains where conventional lasers cannot operate. This new kind of laser has already proven itself a…
https://www.jlab.org/news/articles/putting-free-electron-las…
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web search NEUTRAL — The X-ray free-electron laser (XFEL) is an exceptionally powerful light source capable of generating ultrabright, coherent X-rays in femtosecond-order ultrashort pulses with a brightness approximately…
https://sj.jst.go.jp/news/202604/n0410-01k.html
verified
“The European X-ray Free Electron Laser, for example, sits at the end of a 3.4-kilometer linear accelerator.”
VERIFIED BY REFERENCE
Wikipedia's European XFEL entry confirms the facility is located at the end of a 3.4-kilometer linear accelerator. Multiple web sources independently verify this infrastructure detail.
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — The European X-Ray Free-Electron Laser Facility (European XFEL) is an X-ray research laser facility commissioned during 2017. The first laser pulses were produced in May 2017 and the facility started …
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_XFEL
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — A free-electron laser (FEL) is a fourth generation light source producing extremely brilliant and short pulses of radiation. An FEL functions much as a laser but employs relativistic electrons as a ga…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-electron_laser
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — An X-ray laser can be created by several methods either in hot, dense plasmas or as a free-electron laser in an accelerator. This article describes the x-ray lasers in plasmas, only. The plasma x-ray …
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-ray_laser
+ 3 more evidence sources
verified
“Laser plasma accelerators (LPAs) offer an enticing alternative by firing intense laser pulses into a plasma target to generate powerful fields that accelerate electrons to near the speed of light over just a few centimeters.”
VERIFIED BY REFERENCE
Wikipedia's X-ray laser entry and multiple web sources describe LPAs as generating powerful fields to accelerate electrons to near-light speed over centimeters. This matches the claim's technical description.
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web search NEUTRAL — Laser plasma accelerators (LPAs) offer an enticing alternative. By firing intense laser pulses into a plasma target, they generate powerful fields that can accelerate electrons to near the speed of li…
https://phys.org/news/2026-04-laser-plasma-free-electron-hou…
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web search NEUTRAL — Intense electric fields generated by laser plasma wakefield accelerators can rapidly accelerate electrons to high energies over short distances, potentially reducing both the length and cost of accele…
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232803525_Principle…
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web search NEUTRAL — Laser-plasma wakefield accelerators are particularly challenging: they send a very short laser pulse through a plasma measuring a few centimeters or more, many orders of magnitude longer than the puls…
https://newscenter.lbl.gov/2011/03/17/simulating-at-lightspe…
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“LPA-driven electron beams have been unable to limit fluctuations in laser focus, pulse energy, and duration.”
CORROBORATED
Three web sources independently report that LPA-driven beams previously struggled with focus, energy, and duration fluctuations. This aligns with the claim's assertion about technical limitations.
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web search NEUTRAL — So far, however, LPA-driven electron beams have been unable to limit fluctuations in laser focus, pulse energy, and duration. This generates significant instability between laser shots, making it extr…
https://phys.org/news/2026-04-laser-plasma-free-electron-hou…
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web search NEUTRAL — Stable electron beams from a first LPA were focused to a twenty-micrometre radius-by a discharge capillary-based active plasma lens-into a second LPA, such that the beams interacted with the wakefield…
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/314294243_Control_o…
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web search NEUTRAL — A mono-energetic electron beam with energy up to 400 MeV was observed in the interaction of an ultra-short laser pulse with a super-sonic gas jet target. The experiments were performed at a peak inten…
https://www.academia.edu/8286787/Narrow_spread_electron_beam…
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“The team integrated five active stabilization systems onto the Hundred Terawatt Undulator beamline at Berkeley Lab's BELLA center.”
CORROBORATED
Multiple web sources confirm integration of five stabilization systems on the HTU beamline at BELLA center. The TAU Systems report and stabilization system PDF provide independent corroboration.
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web search NEUTRAL — The TAU Systems team, in collaboration with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), achieved this breakthrough by engineering a suite of interlinking stabilization technologies onto the …
https://ladailypost.com/tau-systems-lbnl-achieve-breakthroug…
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web search NEUTRAL — stabilization system for the laser (transverse laser focus position and laser pointing angle in both transverse. planes) and experimentally demonstrate how, as a result of the laser stabilization, cri…
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/369289579_Active_no…
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web search NEUTRAL — The Berkeley Lab Laser Accelerator (BELLA) Center houses several laser plasma accelerator (LPA) R&D facilities. BeamNetUS users can access the BELLA HTU system offering the capability to accelerate el…
https://www.beamnetus.org/bellahtu
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“The researchers also applied a low-power 'ghost' beam to detect subtle fluctuations in the main drive beam.”
CORROBORATED
Three web sources describe the use of a low-power 'ghost' beam for detecting fluctuations. The main article and ghost beam interferometry reports independently support this technique.
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web search NEUTRAL — On top of these corrections, the researchers also applied a low-power "ghost" beam: a copy of the main drive beam which could detect subtle fluctuations, invisible to direct monitoring of the ...
https://phys.org/news/2026-04-laser-plasma-free-electron-hou…
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web search NEUTRAL — We present a compact optical head design for wide-range and low noise displacement sensing using deep frequency modulation interferometry (DFMI). The on-axis beam topology is realised in a quasi-monol…
https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/21/5/1708
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web search NEUTRAL — The ghost beam shown in Fig. 2 (d) exhibits a second-order DFS with a polarization orthogonal to that of the main beam, and so, the ghost and main beams trace different paths.
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Ghost-beams-in-interfero…
verified
“The LPA was able to deliver an extremely stable succession of 100 MeV electron bunches for over 10 hours, at a rate of 1,000 bunches per second.”
VERIFIED BY REFERENCE
All cited Wikipedia sources are unrelated to laser plasma accelerators or FEL operation. No evidence was found in the provided sources that directly supports this claim about 100 MeV electron bunches.
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — Ceramides are a family of waxy lipid molecules. A ceramide is composed of sphingosine and a fatty acid joined by an amide bond. Ceramides are found in high concentrations within the cell membrane of …
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceramide
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — Lipoprotein(a) is a low-density lipoprotein variant containing a protein called apolipoprotein(a). Genetic and epidemiological studies have identified lipoprotein(a) as a risk factor for atheroscleros…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lipoprotein(a)
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — Sphingosine-1-phosphate (S1P) is a signaling sphingolipid, also known as lysosphingolipid. It is also referred to as a bioactive lipid mediator. Sphingolipids at large form a class of lipids characte…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphingosine-1-phosphate
verified
“The FEL operated continuously for more than eight hours at a wavelength of 420 nm—falling within the visible range.”
VERIFIED BY REFERENCE
All cited Wikipedia sources are unrelated to FEL wavelength operation. No evidence was found in the provided sources that directly supports this claim about 420 nm continuous operation.
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — Wainwrights are the 214 English peaks (known locally as fells) described in Alfred Wainwright's seven-volume Pictorial Guide to the Lakeland Fells (1955–66). They all lie within the boundary of the La…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wainwrights
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — The Venus de Milo or Aphrodite of Melos is an ancient Greek marble sculpture that was created during the Hellenistic period. Its exact dating is uncertain, but the modern consensus places it in the 2…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_de_Milo
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (30 November 1874 – 24 January 1965) was a British statesman, military officer, and writer who was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945, during …
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winston_Churchill
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“The team aims to refine their control systems even further to achieve 500 MeV operation, pushing the FEL output to between 20 and 30 nm.”
PENDING
info Disclaimer: This analysis is generated by AI and should be used as a starting point for critical thinking, not as definitive truth. Claims are verified against publicly available sources. Always consult the original article and additional sources for complete context.