The University of Wisconsin is taking a leap into the future with a grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to build an electron-producing gun on campus as the first step to creating a giant electron laser.

UW’s Synchrotron Radiation Center was awarded a $4.5 million dollar grant from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Basic Energy Sciences office to build an electron gun, according to a statement released by UW.

Joe Bisognano, director of the Synchrotron Radiation Center and a professor of engineering at UW, said the electron gun is a vacuum tube, like ones found in older television sets, which produces a stream of elections which would then be sent down the rest of the Free Electron Laser.

Bisognano added the electron gun is the source of streams of electrons for the the much larger Free Electron Laser.

The laser would be several football fields long and would be the world’s brightest source of ultraviolet light and soft X-rays, according to the statement.

“The free laser would be a tremendously bright source of light, it would allow us to do experiments which cannot be done today,” Bisognano said.

Bisognano said the space across the street from the Synchrotron Radiation Center, located at 3731 Schneider Drive off of Stoughton Road, would be big enough to house the Free Electron Laser.

The free laser beam would produce short quick pulses of light measured in quadrillionths of a second, the statement said.

However, before the large Free Electron Laser can be built UW must first build the electron gun and show it can work.

Bisognano said a working electron gun would give UW credibility in this field and would bring in more grants, which would be needed to build the laser.

“We would need hundreds of millions of dollars in grants to actually build the facility to house the laser,” Bisognano said.

The creation of the laser would open up a whole world of possibilities for scientific research on campus.

Bisognano said the laser would allow scientists to see chemistry happening before their eyes. Currently, he said, scientists can only see the before and after results of chemical processes.

Bisognano said these processes happen so quickly that current technology is to slow to see it.

“To watch chemistry happen you need to have a pulse which happens very quickly,” Bisognano said.

The laser’s pulses would, repeating at the quadrillionths of seconds, would be fast enough to see the processes.

Being able to see how the chemistry happens could create new energy sources, exotic materials and new nanotechnology, Bisognano said.

Bisognano said for example being able to see photosynthesis happening in plants at the molecular level could be used to fashion new energy sources.

UW students will be involved with the Synchrotron Radiation Center’s research and other projects with the electron gun.

Bisognano said they will have a couple of graduate students involved with the project, and might also be including some undergraduates with the project.