US researchers develop compact x-ray source

Nature : A husband-and-wife team of physicists at JILA in Boulder, Colorado, have developed a handheld x-ray source that could one day substitute for the much more massive particle accelerators currently in use. Margaret Murnane and Henry Kapteyn’s tabletop source uses high-harmonic generation, in which laser light is passed through a medium that converts it to light of shorter wavelengths and higher frequencies. Murnane hopes that the relatively low cost and small size of such a future soft x-ray source could make it more accessible for all scientists. “The beams generated by the device could, for instance, help materials scientists to make better solar materials by tracking the paths of electrons through solar cells, and might allow chemists to trace the ultrafast dynamics of photosynthesis and catalysis,” writes Katherine Bourzac for Nature.