An all-optical Compton source for single-exposure X-ray imaging
Abstract
All-optical Compton sources are innovative, compact devices to produce high energy femtosecond X-rays. Here we present results on a single-pulse scheme that uses a plasma mirror to reflect the drive beam of a laser plasma accelerator and to make it collide with the highly-relativistic electrons in its wake. The accelerator is operated in the self-injection regime, producing quasi-monoenergetic electron beams of around 150 MeV peak energy. Scattering with the intense femtosecond laser pulse leads to the emission of a collimated high energy photon beam. Using continuum-attenuation filters we measure significant signal content beyond 100 keV and with simulations we estimate a peak photon energy of around 500 keV. The source divergence is about 13 mrad and the pointing stability is 7 mrad. We demonstrate that the photon yield from the source is sufficiently high to illuminate a centimeter-size sample placed 90 centimeters behind the source, thus obtaining radiographs in a single shot.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1510.08316,
title = {An all-optical Compton source for single-exposure X-ray imaging},
author = {A. Döpp and E. Guillaume and C. Thaury and J. Gautier and I. Andriyash and A. Lifschitz and J-P. Goddet and A. Tafzi and V. Malka and A. Rousse and K. Ta Phuoc},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1510.08316},
year = {2016}
}