ULTRAFAST MATERIALS PROBING WITH THE LLNL THOMSON X-RAY SOURCE

Abstract

The use of short laser pulses to generate very high brightness, ultra short (fs to ps) x-ray pulses is a topic of great interest. In principle, femtosecond-scale pump-probe experiments can be used to temporally resolve structural dynamics of materials on the time scale of atomic motion. The development of sub–ps x-ray pulses will make possible a wide range of materials and plasma physics studies with unprecedented time resolution. PLEIADES (Picosecond Laser Electron Interaction for Dynamic Evaluation of Structures), the Thomson scattering project at LLNL, will provide such a novel x-ray source of high power using short laser pulses and a high brightness, relativistic electron bunch. The system is based on a 5 mm-mrad normalized emittance photoinjector, 100 MeV electron RF linac, and a 300 mJ, 35 fs solid-state laser system. PLEIADES will produce ultra fast pulses with x-ray energies (60 keV) capable of probing into high-Z metals.