Several tens of thousands of particle accelerators are in use today with varied applications in research, industry, medicine and other fields. Yet accelerator usage could be much more widespread, were it not limited by cost and size constraints, especially in hospitals, universities and small and medium size companies. This would enable ground-breaking applications and innovations on a much larger scale. 

A possible solution to this bottleneck is the development of more compact – and consequently more cost-efficient – accelerator technologies, a strategy that has been investigated in the past two decades bringing forth plasma accelerators as one of its most promising candidates.