The potential of plasma wakefield acceleration

Scientists around the world are testing ways to further boost the power of particle accelerators while drastically shrinking their size. At least when it comes to particle accelerators, bigger is usually better. The bigger the particle accelerator, the more energetic its particle collisions; the more energetic the collision, the greater the variety of particles produced. Before CERN's Large Hadron Collider, the world's most powerful accelerator was the Tevatron, a circular collider 4 miles long....