A factory laser that cuts and welds metal on production lines has been made to work as a particle accelerator for the first time. Physicists took a standard ytterbium laser, its heart is a crystal the size of a palm, and turned its flashes into a tool for accelerating electrons to nearly the speed of light. Previously, such a trick required unique laser systems the size of a room, but here an ordinary industrial device does the job.

The laser fires picosecond pulses (trillionths of a second), which are then compressed 20-fold — down to 50 femtoseconds. It's like gathering a long roll of thunder into a single flash of lightning. The compressed pulse hits a gas jet and creates a plasma bubble — a tiny cavity where electrons are caught by the wave, like surfers on a crest, and shot forward with energies of several megaelectronvolts. Meanwhile, the laser operates in burst mode: you can set from 625 to 6250 shots per second — tens of times more often than in previous experiments.

Numerical simulations showed that the acceleration runs in a self-regulating mode: the laser beam self-focuses in the plasma, creating conditions for stable acceleration. This is like a speedboat creating a wake that pushes a swimmer — only here the wave is made of electrons, and the boat is a light pulse. This approach combines the reliability of factory equipment with the efficiency of plasma acceleration, promising compact sources of fast electrons for radiation therapy, ultrafast imaging, and materials quality control.