Production of a keV x-ray beam from synchrotron radiation in relativistic laser-plasma interaction.
We demonstrate that a beam of x-ray radiation can be generated by simply focusing a single high-intensity laser pulse into a gas jet. A millimeter-scale laser-produced plasma creates, accelerates, and wiggles an ultrashort and relativistic electron bunch. As they propagate in the ion channel produced in the wake of the laser pulse, the accelerated electrons undergo betatron oscillations, generating a femtosecond pulse of synchrotron radiation, which has keV energy and lies within a narrow (50 mrad) cone angle.
Rousse
Antoine
A
Laboratoire d'Optique Appliquée, ENSTA, CNRS UMR7639, Ecole Polytechnique, Chemin de la Hunière, 91761 Palaiseau, France.
Phuoc
Kim Ta
KT
Shah
Rahul
R
Pukhov
Alexander
A
Lefebvre
Eric
E
Malka
Victor
V
Kiselev
Sergey
S
Burgy
Fréderic
F
Rousseau
Jean-Philippe
JP
Umstadter
Donald
D
Hulin
Daniéle
D