Thomson-Backscattered X Rays From Laser-Accelerated Electrons

Abstract

We present the first observation of Thomson-backscattered light from laser-accelerated electrons. In a compact, all-optical setup, the "photon collider," a high-intensity laser pulse is focused into a pulsed He gas jet and accelerates electrons to relativistic energies. A counterpropagating laser probe pulse is scattered from these high-energy electrons, and the backscattered x-ray photons are spectrally analyzed. This experiment demonstrates a novel source of directed ultrashort x-ray pulses and additionally allows for time-resolved spectroscopy of the laser acceleration of electrons.

Tunable All-Optical Quasimonochromatic Thomson X-Ray Source in the Nonlinear Regime

“…Wiggling these low-emittance electron beams either in alternating magnetic field structures (undulator radiation [18,19]), strongly focusing plasma fields (betatron radiation [20,21]), or intense laser fields (Thomson-Compton scattering [22][23][24][25]) produces x-ray beams, in the latter two cases with extremely high peak brilliance for photon energies above 10 keV.…”

MeV-Energy X Rays from Inverse Compton Scattering with Laser-Wakefield Accelerated Electrons

“…In a previous study of a LWFA-based Compton source, only soft x rays ($ 1 keV) without beam properties are reported [7]. More recently, a single laser pulse is used to both accelerate the electrons and scatter (after reflection from a plasma mirror) [8].…”

Shock-Front Injector for High-Quality Laser-Plasma Acceleration

“…One of the important applications of the inherently fewfs long electron bunches [3,4] is currently the generation of ultrashort XUV/x-ray bursts with narrow or broad bandwidth via undulator radiation [5], Thomson backscattering [6], or betatron radiation [7,8]. Especially for narrowband x rays, a precise control of the electrons' peak energy E peak and a low full width at half maximum (FWHM) energy spread ÁE are important.…”