Ultra-bright Coherent Undulator Radiation Driven by Dielectric Laser Accelerator

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that dielectric laser accelerators can produce ultra-bright, coherent undulator radiation with brilliance comparable or superior to synchrotrons, using significantly lower beam power.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach to generate high-brightness X-ray radiation using dielectric laser accelerators with attosecond electron bunches.

Findings

Brilliance of the radiation is comparable or higher than synchrotrons.

Achieves high-brightness radiation with much lower beam power.

Normalized brilliance surpasses existing sources across VUV to soft X-ray spectrum.

Abstract

A dielectric laser accelerator, operating at optical frequencies and GHz pulse rate, is expected to produce attosec electron bunches with a moderate beam current at high energy. For relativistic electrons, the attosec bunch has a spatial length of a few nanometers, which is well suited for generating high-brightness superradiance in the VUV, EUV, and x-ray spectra. Our study shows that the brilliance of coherent undulator radiation driven by a short-bunch beam with 1~10 fC bunch charge from a dielectric laser accelerator is comparable to or higher than that of a synchrotron in the 0.1 ~ 3 keV photon energy range, even though the beam power of the dielectric laser accelerator is about a million times lower than that of a synchrotron. When the brilliance under comparison is normalized to the electron beam power, the proposed coherent undulator radiation source becomes the brightest source on earth across the whole VUV, EUV, and soft x-ray spectrum.