From gravitational microlensing to plasma wakefield acceleration

by Philip Yock (University of Auckland, New Zealand)

Tuesday 25 Jan 2011, 17:15 → 18:15 Europe/Berlin

Auditorium

Gravitational microlensing, the lens-like action of a star by the deviation of light in the gravitational field, is nowadays routinely observed with computerised wide-field telescopes. Recent observations of the Microlensing Observations in Astrophysics (MOA) collaboration on dark matter, stellar limb darkening and extrasolar planets will be briefly reviewed. Gravitational microlensing complements conventional techniques in astronomy in the sense that the Rayleigh criterion for diffraction limited optics can be improved by several orders of magnitude. This effect is analogous to plasma wakefield particle acceleration in which accelerationgradients are achieved that exceed by several orders of magnitude those obtained by conventional means. Gravitational microlensing will be compared with plasma wakefield acceleration and novel applications for plasma wakefield acceleration will be discussed.