On the properties of synchrotron-like X-ray emission from laser wakefield accelerated electron beams
Abstract
The electric and magnetic fields responsible for electron acceleration in a Laser Wakefield Accelerator (LWFA) also cause electrons to radiate x-ray photons. Such x-ray pulses have several desirable properties including short duration and being well collimated with tunable high energy. We measure the scaling of this x-ray source experimentally up to laser powers greater than 100 TW. An increase in laser power allows electron trapping at a lower density as well as with an increased trapped charge. These effects resulted in an x-ray fluence that was measured to increase non-linearly with laser power. The fluence of x-rays was also compared with that produced from K-α emission resulting from a solid target interaction for the same energy laser pulse. The flux was shown to be comparable, but the LWFA x-rays had a significantly smaller source size. This indicates that such a source may be useful as a backlighter for probing high energy density plasmas with ultrafast temporal resolution.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Pub Defense Publication
- Publication Date
- Apr 01, 2018
- Source ID
- 10.1063/1.5024547
Entities
People
- A. G. R. Thomas
- Anatoly Maksimchuk
- Chris Mcguffey
- Franklin J Dollar
- G. Kalintchenko
- Karl Krushelnick
- M. Vargas
- S P D Mangles
- S. Kneip
- T. Matsuoka
- V. Chvykov
- V. Yanovsky
- W. Schumaker
- Zulfikar Najmudin
Organizations
- Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
- Imperial College London
- National Science Foundation Directorate for Mathematical & Physical Sciences
- United States Department of Energy
- United States Department of Homeland Security
- University of Michigan