Terawatt attosecond X-ray source driven by a plasma accelerator
Abstract
Plasma accelerators can generate ultra high brightness electron beams which open the door to light sources with smaller physical footprint and properties un-achievable with conventional accelerator technology. In this paper we show that electron beams from Plasma WakeField Accelerators (PWFAs) can generate few-cycle coherent tunable soft X-ray pulses with TW peak power and a duration of tens of attoseconds, an order of magnitude more powerful, shorter and with better stability than state-of-the-art X-ray Free Electron Lasers (XFELs). Such a light source would significantly enhance the ability to experimentally investigate electron dynamics on ultrafast timescales, having broad-ranging impact across multiple scientific fields. Rather than starting from noise as in typical XFELs, the X-rays emission in this approach is driven by coherent radiation from a pre-bunched, near Mega Ampere (MA) current electron beam of attosecond duration. This relaxes the restrictive tolerances which have hindered progress towards utilizing plasma accelerators as coherent X-ray drivers thus far, presenting a new paradigm for advanced-accelerator light source applications.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2011.07163,
title = {Terawatt attosecond X-ray source driven by a plasma accelerator},
author = {Claudio Emma and Xinlu Xu and Andrew Fisher and James P. MacArthur and James Cryan and Mark J. Hogan and Pietro Musumeci and Glen White and Agostino Marinelli},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2011.07163},
year = {2021}
}