Influence of the temporal contrast on the characteristics of laser-produced ultrafast K{\alpha} Hard X-ray source

TL;DR

This study investigates how the temporal contrast of a femtosecond laser influences the characteristics of a laser-produced ultrafast Kα X-ray source, revealing the dominant heating mechanisms and optimizing X-ray emission efficiency.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of the effects of laser temporal contrast on Kα X-ray generation, highlighting the role of different laser-plasma interaction mechanisms across intensity regimes.

Findings

High fluxes of Mo Kα radiation achieved at high laser contrast.

The Kα efficiency remains similar across a wide contrast range in the relativistic regime.

Resonance absorption, vacuum heating, and JxB mechanisms are demonstrated to influence X-ray production.

Abstract

Characteristics of the intense ultrafast quazi-monochromatic X-ray source at 17.4 keV generated by a multi-TW femtosecond Ti:Sa-laser beam ($\lambda$=800 nm) tightly focused on a thick molybdenum target are investigated within a wide range of laser pulse peak intensities ($10^{16}$ - $10^{19}$ W/cm$^2$) and temporal contrast ($10^6$ - $10^{10}$). Spatial and absolute spectrally-resolved energetic parameters of produced pulsed X ray emission are measured. Fluxes of Mo K$\alpha$ line radiation reaching $2\times 10^9$ photons/sr per laser shot and energy conversion efficiency as high as $3.2\times 10^{-5} sr^{-1}$ are obtained at high laser contrast of $>10^9$. The interplay of resonance absorption, vacuum heating and ponderomotive (JxB) heating mechanisms of the laser-plasma interaction is clearly demonstrated by different K$\alpha$ conversion efficiency dependencies at different laser pulse intensity and contrast parameters. The results are confirmed by examining dependencies on the laser incidence angle. In the relativistic intensity regime, the K$\alpha$ efficiency shows similar values within the whole examined range of the laser temporal contrast, which varies over 4 orders of magnitude resulting in the electron density scale length L of the pre-formed plasma changing from L<<$\lambda$ to L>$\lambda$. It confirms the dominant role of the JxB mechanism accompanied by the effect of plasma interface steepening under laser radiation pressure in the relativistic interaction regime.