Laser-driven x-ray and proton micro-source and application to simultaneous single-shot bi-modal radiographic imaging

Abstract

Radiographic imaging with x-rays and protons is an omnipresent tool in basic research and applications in industry, material science and medical diagnostics. The information contained in both modalities can often be valuable in principle, but difficult to access simultaneously. Laser-driven solid-density plasma-sources deliver both kinds of radiation, but mostly single modalities have been explored for applications. Their potential for bi-modal radiographic imaging has never been fully realized, due to problems in generating appropriate sources and separating image modalities. Here, we report on the generation of proton and x-ray microsources in laser-plasma interactions of the focused Texas Petawatt laser with solid-density, micrometer-sized tungsten needles. We apply them for bi-modal radiographic imaging of biological and technological objects in a single laser shot. Thereby, advantages of laser-driven sources could be enriched beyond their small footprint by embracing their additional unique properties, including the spectral bandwidth, small source size and multi-mode emission.

X-ray-induced acoustic computed tomography and its applications in biomedicine

“…Laser-driven X-ray sources utilize intense laser beams, with nanoseconds or less pulse, couple of kHz repetition rate, and energy in the range of keV to MeV would serve as a perfect excitation source for future XACT imaging 49 – 51 This adaptability reinforces XACT’s role in elevating medical imaging practices by contributing to heightened precision and resolution.…”

Pulsed Laser Ablation in Liquids for Fabrication of Noble Metal Nanostructures

“…Optical beam deflection ($10 À9 s), small angle x-ray scattering (SAXS) ($10 À6 s), laser light scattering ($10 À9 -10 À6 s), and x-ray radiography ($10 À6 s) are used to examine the nanoparticle growth. Using techniques such as high-speed photography ($10 À10 -10 À6 s) and optical beam deflection ($10 À9 s), the entire dynamics of PLAL procedure can be researched [118][119][120][121][122][123][124][125].…”

Proton imaging of high-energy-density laboratory plasmas

“…This can be used as an alignment or registration fiducial for proton deflectometry (Johnson et al, 2022). Using lowerintensity lasers (Orimo et al, 2007), one can image smaller or less dense objects, and a variant of this scheme uses a thin needle to produce protons and x rays (Ostermayr et al, 2020) along the same line of sight. This dual imaging has been shown with electrons as well (Nishiuchi et al, 2015;Faenov, Pikuz, and Kodama, 2016), which could be used to break the degeneracy between electric and magnetic fields.…”