Electron-based ultrashort hard x-ray source

Abstract

Recently, an electron-based ultrashort hard-x-ray source has been developed at the Laser Zentrum Hannover e.V. In this source x-ray pulses are produced by combining femtosecond laser technology with a specially designed x-ray diode. At first, ultrashort electron pulses are generated by photoemission from a photocathode. Then, these electron pulses are accelerated over a short distance towards a high-Z anode. Hard-x-rays are produced via Bremsstrahlung and characteristic line emission. Now detailed measurements of the hard-x-ray pulse duration have been performed using an advanced streak camera. The streak camera has a sub-picosecond time resolution in the keV range. With this camera hard-x-ray pulse durations of less than 5 ps were observed for electron pulse charges of the order of several pC. In this contribution we present our results on the x-ray pulse duration measurements and their dependence on different experimental parameters. A comparison with theoretical simulations is given.