Number 230 (Story #2), June 14, 1995 by Phillip F. Schewe and Ben Stein AN ACCELERATION GRADIENT OF 30 GeV/m has been achieved by scientists from a consortium of labs in Japan. The researchers used short (1 psec) and powerful (3 TW) laser pulses to excite waves in a plasma. Electrons which had been injected into the plasma at an energy of 1 MeV were then accelerated up to an energy of 25 MeV, all in a space of less than 1 mm, for a net gradient of 30 GeV/m. For such ultrahigh acceleration gradients to be useful for particle physics applications (squeezing the milelong SLAC accelerator, say, into a space of only a few meters), the whole process would have to be scaled up considerably. (K. Nakajima et al., Physical Review Letters, 29 May 1995.)