Extremely brilliant crystal-based light sources

TL;DR

This paper calculates the brilliance of novel crystal-based gamma-ray light sources using atomistic modeling, demonstrating their potential to outperform existing sources in certain energy ranges and highlighting their interdisciplinary construction challenges.

Contribution

It introduces a method to compute the brilliance of crystal-based gamma-ray light sources and demonstrates their superior performance in specific photon energy ranges.

Findings

Brilliance of crystal-based sources exceeds conventional methods in 10^0 - 10^1 MeV range.

Diamond-based crystalline undulators can produce high-brilliance gamma-ray radiation.

Crystal-based light sources are a low-cost alternative with broad applications.

Abstract

Brilliance of novel gamma-ray Crystal-based Light Sources (CLS) that can be constructed through exposure of oriented crystals to beams of ultra-relativistic charged particles is calculated basing on the atomistic scale numerical modeling of the channeling process. In an exemplary case study, the brilliance of radiation emitted in a diamond-based Crystalline Undulator LS by a 10 GeV positron beam available at present at the SLAC facility is computed. Intesity of CU radiation in the photon energy range 10^0 - 10^1 MeV, which is inaccessible to conventional synchrotrons, undulators and XFELs, greatly exceeds that of laser-Compton scattering LSs and can be higher than predicted in the Gamma Factory proposal to CERN. Construction of novel CLSs is a challenging task which constitutes a highly interdisciplinary field entangling a broad range of correlated activities. CLSs provide a low-cost altenative to conventional LSs and have enomorous number of applications.