Production of a keV X-Ray Beam from Synchrotron Radiation in Relativistic Laser-Plasma Interaction

Authors

• Antoine Rousse, Laboratoire d'Optique Appliquée, ENSTA, CNRS UMR7639, Ecole Polytechnique, Chemin de la Hunière, France
• Kim Ta Phuoc, Laboratoire d'Optique Appliquée, ENSTA, CNRS UMR7639, Ecole Polytechnique, Chemin de la Hunière, France
• Rahul Shah, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
• Alexander Pukhov, Insitut fuer Theoretische Physik I, Heinrich-Heine-Universitaet, Duesseldorf,Germany
• Eric Lefebvre, Département de Physique Théorique et Appliquée, CEA/DAM Ile- de-France, France
• Victor Malka, Laboratoire d'Optique Appliquée, ENSTA, CNRS UMR7639, Ecole Polytechnique, Chemin de la Hunière, FranceFollow
• Sergey Kiselev, Insitut fuer Theoretische Physik I, Heinrich-Heine-Universitaet, Duesseldorf,Germany
• Frederic Burgy, Laboratoire d'Optique Appliquée, ENSTA, CNRS UMR7639, Ecole Polytechnique, Chemin de la Hunière, France
• Jean-Philippe Rousseau, Laboratoire d'Optique Appliquée, ENSTA, CNRS UMR7639, Ecole Polytechnique, Chemin de la Hunière, France
• Donald P. Umstadter, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow
• Daniele Hulin, Laboratoire d'Optique Appliquée, ENSTA, CNRS UMR7639, Ecole Polytechnique, Chemin de la Hunière, France

Document Type

Article

Date of this Version

9-24-2004

Comments

Published by American Physical Society. Phys. Rev. Lett. 93, 135005 (2004). http://prl.aps.org. Copyright © 2004 American Physical Society. Permission to use.

Abstract

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.