An all-optical Compton source for single-exposure X-ray imaging

Abstract

All-optical Compton sources are innovative, compact devices to produce high energy femtosecond X-rays. Here we present results on a single-pulse scheme that uses a plasma mirror to reflect the drive beam of a laser plasma accelerator and to make it collide with the highly-relativistic electrons in its wake. The accelerator is operated in the self-injection regime, producing quasi-monoenergetic electron beams of around 150 MeV peak energy. Scattering with the intense femtosecond laser pulse leads to the emission of a collimated high energy photon beam. Using continuum-attenuation filters we measure significant signal content beyond 100 keV and with simulations we estimate a peak photon energy of around 500 keV. The source divergence is about 13 mrad and the pointing stability is 7 mrad. We demonstrate that the photon yield from the source is sufficiently high to illuminate a centimeter-size sample placed 90 centimeters behind the source, thus obtaining radiographs in a single shot.

References in corpus (4)

• Femtosecond x rays from laser-plasma accelerators
• All-optical Compton gamma-ray source
• Compact tunable Compton x-ray source from laser-plasma accelerator and plasma mirror
• A spectral unaveraged algorithm for free electron laser simulations

Cited by in corpus (8)

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• Energy-chirp compensation in laser wakefield accelerators
• Highly efficient laser-driven Compton gamma-ray source
• Compact Spectroscopy of keV to MeV X-rays from a Laser Wakefield Accelerator
• Research towards high-repetition rate laser-driven X-ray sources for imaging applications
• Determining the duration of an intense laser pulse directly in focus
• Quasi-monochromatic bright gamma-ray generation from synchronized Compton scattering via azimuthal spatial-temporal coupling
• A Platform for All-optical Thomson/ Compton Scattering with Versatile Parameters