Hard X-rays from laser-wakefield accelerators in density tailored plasmas

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a method to significantly increase the energy and flux of betatron X-ray sources from laser-plasma accelerators using density tailored plasmas, enhancing their potential applications.

Contribution

The authors introduce a simple technique to boost X-ray energy and flux by controlling electron orbits with density tailored plasmas, without increasing laser energy.

Findings

X-ray energy increased by an order of magnitude

X-ray flux significantly improved

Method effective with existing laser systems

Abstract

Betatron x-ray sources from laser-plasma accelerators combine compactness, high peak brightness, femtosecond pulse duration and broadband spectrum. However, when produced with Terawatt class lasers, their energy was so far restricted to a few kilo-electronvolt (keV), limiting the range of possible applications. Here we present a simple method to increase the energy and the flux by an order of magnitude without increasing the laser energy. The orbits of the relativistic electrons emitting the radiation were controlled using density tailored plasmas so that the efficiency of the Betatron source is significantly improved.