Numerical calculations of a high brilliance synchrotron source and on issues with characterizing strong radiation damping effects in non-linear Thomson/Compton backscattering experiments

TL;DR

This paper presents numerical simulations of radiation emission in high-brilliance synchrotron sources and discusses the challenges of observing radiation damping effects in non-linear Thomson/Compton scattering experiments with realistic electron bunches.

Contribution

It provides detailed numerical calculations of radiation spectra considering radiation damping effects in realistic experimental setups, highlighting measurement strategies and source brilliance.

Findings

Radiation damping effects are hard to observe directly in photon distributions for realistic electron beams.

Electron beam property measurements can reveal damping effects in experiments.

The proposed source achieves peak spectral brilliance over 10^{29} photons/(s·mm²·mrad²·0.1% bandwidth).

Abstract

A number of theoretical calculations have studied the effect of radiation reaction forces on radiation distributions in strong field counter-propagating electron beam-laser interactions, but could these effects - including quantum corrections - be observed in interactions with realistic bunches and focusing fields, as is hoped in a number of soon to be proposed experiments? We present numerical calculations of the angularly resolved radiation spectrum from an electron bunch with parameters similar to those produced in laser wakefield acceleration experiments, interacting with an intense, ultrashort laser pulse. For our parameters, the effects of radiation damping on the angular distribution and energy distribution of \emph{photons} is not easily discernible for a "realistic" moderate emittance electron beam. However, experiments using such a counter-propagating beam-laser geometry should be able to measure such effects using current laser systems through measurement of the \emph{electron beam} properties. In addition, the brilliance of this source is very high, with peak spectral brilliance exceeding $10^{29}$ photons$\,$s$^{-1}$mm$^{-2}$mrad$^{-2}(0.1$% bandwidth$)^{-1}$ with approximately 2% efficiency and with a peak energy of 10 MeV.