Fantastically Low Energy Accelerator Reaches 100 peV Available to Purchase

Reversing the trend in accelerator construction, William Fairbank and his collaborators (Fred Witteborn and Larry Knight) at Stanford University have built a Fantastically Low Energy Accelerator, also known as FLEA. The device is being used to compare gravitational attraction of the electron and positron and to measure their anomalous magnetic moments. Ground state electrons or positrons travel up a cylindrical tube, guided by a magnetic field, and their time of arrival is measured. Fairbank, speaking at the annual Belfer Graduate School conference on 16 Nov., said that in a 2‐cm‐diameter tube they have obtained energies as low as $10−10 eV,$ much smaller than was thought possible.