Stabilizing influences The BELLA Center’s Samuel Barber (left) and Finn Kohrell hard at work at the high-power laser facility. (Courtesy: Robinson Kuntz/Berkeley Lab)"> Stabilizing influences The BELLA Center’s Samuel Barber (left) and Finn Kohrell hard at work at the high-power laser facility. (Courtesy: Robinson Kuntz/Berkeley Lab)

A laser plasma accelerator (LPA) has been used to power a free electron laser (FEL) for more than eight hours, delivering stable pulses of coherent light. The system was created in the US by researchers at the company Tau Systems and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory . The team says that its achievement represents a major breakthrough in stability for LPA-driven FELs, which could someday make coherent UV and X-ray pulses more accessible to academia and industry.

An FEL creates bright pulses of coherent light – usually in the ultraviolet-to-X-ray portion of the electromagnetic spectrum.…