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

Antoine Rousse (1) , Kim Ta Phuoc (1, 2) , Rahul Shah (2) , Alexander Pukhov (3) , Eric Lefebvre (4) , Victor Malka (1) , Sergey Kiselev (3) , Frédéric Burgy (1) , Jean-Philippe Rousseau (1) , Donald Umstadter (2) , Daniéle Hulin (1)

1 LOA - Laboratoire d'optique appliquée
2 CUOS - Center for Ultrafast Optical Sciences
3 Insitut fur Theoretische Physik I
4 DPTA - Département de Physique Théorique et Appliquée

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.

Domains: Physics [physics]; Physics [physics]; Optics [physics.optics]

Antoine Rousse, Kim Ta Phuoc, Rahul Shah, Alexander Pukhov, Eric Lefebvre, et al.. Production of a keV X-Ray Beam from Synchrotron Radiation in Relativistic Laser-Plasma Interaction. Physical Review Letters, 2004, 93 (13), pp.135005. ⟨10.1103/PhysRevLett.93.135005⟩. ⟨hal-00517081⟩