Abstract
During the interaction of a high-intensity picosecond laser pulse with a plasma, a large amount of relativistic electrons are accelerated. If these electrons interact with a high-Z solid target, Bremsstrahlung photons are generated. This multi-MeV x-ray source may be used in various applications including radiography and photonuclear studies. The characteristics of such sources, produced with a petawatt laser interacting with different targets, are investigated numerically, using laser-plasma interaction and transport codes to model the relativistic electron acceleration and their transport in the conversion target, respectively. If the laser pulse interacts with a preplasma in front of a solid target, the on-axis dose first increases with preplasma scale-length, but then saturates and fluctuates, due to strong filamentation of the petawatt pulse. In an ionized gas jet, laser hosing reduces the electron emission along the propagation direction and thus the dose. For a capillary tube filled with plasma, the laser pulse is well confined along the axis and a net increase of the on-axis dose is obtained. The X-spot size obtained for these different cases varies from 20 μm to a few hundred microns.
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