Clever idea—shoot a petawatt laser into a plasma channel, let the photons kick electrons to relativistic speeds, then squeeze that beam with a photonic crystal lattice so it keeps its focus. Mix that with a micro‑cavity to recycle the light, cut the footprint, and you get a miniature collider that could feed a fusion core. The risk is the laser damage and timing jitter, but with real‑time adaptive optics we could tame that. The next step? Build a test‑bed with a 1‑meter stage and see if the photons can punch through the plasma without tearing the chamber. If it works, we’ll be smashing particles while the whole thing fits on a kitchen table.