Session CO2 - Laser Accelerators; Ultraintense Laser Applications.
ORAL session, Monday afternoon, November 15
Room 203, SCC
The production of ultrashort (tens of fs) pulses of x-rays from a laser wakefield accelerator (LWFA) is discussed. The high quality electron bunches recently obtained from LWFA experiments can be used to produce x-ray through several mechanisms: i) Betatron (synchrotron-like) radiation emitted as the accelerated electrons undergo transverse oscillations due to the radial focusing field of the wake; ii) Bremsstrahlung radiation that is produced by placing a solid target in the electron bunch path; and iii) Thomson scattering by using a second, counterpropagating laser pulse to intersect the electron bunch.. Although betatron radiation and Bremsstrahlung are inherently broadband, Thomson scattering can produce narrow bandwidth x-rays, provided that the electron bunch is monoenergetic. Recent theoretical and experimental results using the 10 TW l'OASIS laser system at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory will be presented. The comparison between the different x-ray generation mechanisms will be discussed. This work is supported by DoE, DE-AC03-76SF0098.