Plasma-guided Compton source

Publication type
Citation

T. Meir, I. Cohen, K. Tangtartharakul, T. Cohen, M. Fraenkel, A. Arefiev, and I. Pomerantz, "Plasma-guided Compton source", Phys. Rev. Applied 22, 044004 (2024).

Abstract

We investigated numerically the emission properties of an x-ray source based on direct laser acceleration of electrons interacting with an intense counter-propagating laser pulse. The source was realized by irradiating from both sides a high atomic number plasma-plume target. The resulting x-ray beam was analyzed through three-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations for its spectral content, source size, angular divergence, and temporal structure. For simulated experiments in which the total laser-pulse energy was 1.5 J, we obtained a peak brightness of approximately 1022 (s mrad2 mm2 0.1%BW)-1 of x-ray photons peaking at an energy of 25 keV. The results and their competitiveness in applications are discussed and compared with other laser-based x-ray generation methods.