Metal nanoplasmas as bright sources of hard x-ray pulses

Abstract

We demonstrate a 13-fold increase in hard x-ray bremsstrahlung (10 - 200 keV) emitted by a copper plasma created by 100 fs, 806 nm pulses at $10^{14}-10^{15}$ Wcm${}^{-2}$. This enhancement is achieved by roughening the target surface with copper nanoparticles of ~15 nm size. A simple model that invokes local field modifications by surface plasmon excitation and `lightning rod' effects explains the observed enhancement quantitatively and provides pointers to the design of structured surfaces for maximizing the emission.

4pages, 4 figures, submitted to PRL

References in corpus (1)

• Role of surface roughness in hard x-ray emission from femtosecond laser produced copper plasmas

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