Ultra-bright, ultra-broadband hard x-ray driven by laser-produced energetic electron beams

Abstract

We propose a new method of obtaining a compact ultra-bright, ultra-broadband hard X-ray source. This X-ray source has a high peak brightness in the order of 1022 photons/(s mm2 mrad2 0.1\%BW), an ultrashort duration (10 fs), and a broadband spectrum (flat distribution from 0.1 MeV to 4 MeV), and thus has wide-ranging potential applications, such as in ultrafast Laue diffraction experiments. In our scheme, laser-plasma accelerators (LPAs) provide driven electron beams. A foil target is placed oblique to the beam direction so that the target normal sheath field (TNSF) is used to provide a bending force. Using this TNSF-kick scheme, we can fully utilize the advantages of current LPAs, including their high charge, high energy, and low emittance.