Companies and universities could have access to X-ray Free-Electron Lasers (XFEL) by 2027, an advance that would give them unprecedented access to, and understanding of, interactions taking place in the so-called ultraverse. Ultraverse is a term coined by US company TAU Systems whose XFEL and laser-driven particle accelerator solutions will provide access to ultra-small objects evolving under ultra-fast and powerful conditions. The European XFEL is 3.4km long and was built at a cost of {EUR}1.25bn. According to company CEO Bjorn Manuel Hegelich, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, TAU is developing a scalable solution from 'small room sized for the easier applications to...factory hall sized'. With this, TAU expects to democratise access to facilities that are normally off limits to most. "If you are a company and you want to get time at an XFEL you can't," he said. "The only way to get time is to be in a very...reputable research collaboration." The idea that a laser could drive a plasma wave to accelerate particles has been around since 1979. "It was a brilliant idea, only in "79 there was no laser even imaginable that could do this," said Hegelich. "That changed in the mid-late 80s with the invention of Chirped-Pulse Amplification lasers."
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