Natural Science Forum / Physics / Particle Physics / September 2005

Here's an interesting article:

http://physicsweb.org/articles/news/9/9/15/1

This is a laser accelerator that doesn't use the wakefield effect in a
plasma. Instead you have separate laser and electron beams travelling
through a vacuum and intersecting at a target which somehow transfers
the laser energy to accelerate the electrons.

It's still not clear to me how it works, even after reading that
article.

Anyway, it says this could create a new form of high-energy lepton
collider. I'm wondering if this could be used similarly then to
accelerate muons in the same way? They're much more massive, and thus
might be more interesting to collide. Shouldn't something like this be
able to definitely probe for the Higgs particle? I've even heard the
phrase 'Higgs factory' mentioned in connection with proposed muon
colliders.

Comments?