In the world of particle accelerators, laser wakefield devices are small, but mighty upstarts. The machines can accelerate electrons to near the speed of light using a fraction of the distance required by conventional particle accelerators. However, the electrons are not all uniformly accelerated and beams with a mix of faster and slower particles are less practical. Now researchers have proposed a new way to minimize the energy spread of electrons in laser wakefield accelerators.

Source: Building compact particle accelerators: Bunching electrons can get more done