This article keeps conflating this new "electron" accelerator with traditional "particle" accelerators.
I think it is important to understand that theres a big difference between accelerating an electron and accelerating a protron or neutron.
It is my understanding that the value of traditional particle accelerators is in the sub atomic pieces produced after creating a collision between two particles traveling in opposite directions.
Is it even possible to cause two electrons to collide? Don't electrons occupy multiple points in space at the same time?
That being said the work is still impressive and I am imagining super efficient solar panels being produced from this new tech.
This is a very small particle accelerator. It's small because it only can give the particles an energy of a few MeV and it's small because the usual equipment has the size of a a refrigerator or a building.
You can accelerate electrons, protons, or other particles. It's easier to accelerate electrons/positrons and protons/antiprotons because they have a looooong life and they are charged.
Usually in modern big accelerators they use a particle and an antiparticle, because you can reuse the big tunnel for both. The largest one that used electrons-positrons was the LEP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Electron–Positron_Collid... , but they "dismantle" it and are using the big tunnel for the LHC that use protons-antiprotons.
But if you want to construct two gigantic tunnels instead of one you can make an electron-electron collider. It's probably easier to convince an electron to colide with a positron, but I'd like to ask an expert to get the exact number.
If a very fast electron goes nearby another electron they can get very close before the electrostatic repulsion wins. When there are nearby, they can interchange some very high energy photons, and perhaps some W or Z particles. If you are lucky enough, some of the particles they interchange may escape and steal some energy from the fas electron.
The electrons never really collide, they never touch the other electron. But if you see this from far away (like a few millimeters away) it looks like they have collided and released a particle.
For an exact calculation you must replace the handwaving an small balls story with some Feynman diagrams and quantum mechanics, but the story is close enough.
When you have an electron and a positron, they also don't really collide. They release some photons and other particles. Sometimes all the intermediate particles get reabsorbed and the electron/positron just change direction. Sometimes both disappear and you just see the other particles that gamma rays(that are photons). Sometimes something in between.
With protons-antiprotons it's more complicated because each has three quarks and a lot of gluons that make the calculation more complicated, but at the end it's the same story. The quarks never really colide.
Edit: There are electron-positron nodes in Feynman diagrams, so it's better to say that they can colide, but at high energy the collision is much more complicated than expected because they can interchange particles before the collision.
I think it is important to understand that theres a big difference between accelerating an electron and accelerating a protron or neutron.
It is my understanding that the value of traditional particle accelerators is in the sub atomic pieces produced after creating a collision between two particles traveling in opposite directions.
Is it even possible to cause two electrons to collide? Don't electrons occupy multiple points in space at the same time?
That being said the work is still impressive and I am imagining super efficient solar panels being produced from this new tech.