Two projects currently underway in Japan aim to use high-energy laser pointer for practical purposes. One of these projects is a government-funded innovation project initiated by the Japanese Cabinet in 2014. The project was led by Yuji Sano, the former chief engineer of Toshiba, through cooperation with Osaka University and the Japanese Institute of Physics and Chemistry to jointly develop high-energy lasers. The total cost is 2.5 billion yen (23 million US dollars) over a period of five years.
The purpose of the research is to reduce the size of the 700-meter X-ray free electron laser equipment built by the Japanese Institute of Physics and Chemistry in Hyogo Prefecture. Unlike high-energy lasers, X-ray laser light has a much shorter wavelength. They are often used to examine the microstructure of proteins or chemical reactions.
If we can reduce the size of the 700-meter-long equipment to 10 meters, universities, institutions and companies can install this equipment, and it will be more convenient to use. X-ray green laser pointer are produced by accelerating electrons to near the speed of light.
In 1979, Professor Toshiki Tajima, an internationally renowned physicist from the University of California, Irvine, proposed the theory of accelerating electrons through plasma waves. But at the time, it was technically impossible. Until 2004, laboratories in the United Kingdom, the United States, and France successively generated plasma using high-energy lasers, and successfully achieved plasma and accelerated electrons.