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arXiv · 1711.08687

High-brilliance betatron gamma-ray source powered by laser-accelerated electrons

Julien Ferri·Sébastien Corde·Andreas Döpp·Agustin Lifschitz·Antoine Doche·Cédric Thaury·Kim ta Phuoc·Benoit Mahieu·Igor Andriyash·Victor Malka·Xavier Davoine
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Abstract

Recent progress in laser-driven plasma acceleration now enables the acceleration of electrons to several gigaelectronvolts. Taking advantage of these novel accelerators, ultra-short, compact and spatially coherent X-ray sources called betatron radiation have been developed and applied to high-resolution imaging. However, the scope of the betatron sources is limited by a low energy efficiency and a photon energy in the 10's of kiloelectronvolt range, which for example prohibits the use of these sources for probing dense matter. Here, based on three-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations, we propose an original hybrid scheme that combines a low-density laser-driven plasma accelerator with a high-density beam-driven plasma radiator, and thereby considerably increases the photon energy and the radiated energy of the betatron source. The energy efficiency is also greatly improved, with about 1% of the laser energy transferred to the radiation, and the gamma-ray photon energy exceeds the megaelectronvolt range when using a 15 J laser pulse. This high-brilliance hybrid betatron source opens the way to a wide range of applications requiring MeV photons, such as the production of medical isotopes with photo-nuclear reactions, radiography of dense objects in the defense or industrial domains and imaging in nuclear physics.

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Julien Ferri, Sébastien Corde, Andreas Döpp, Agustin Lifschitz, Antoine Doche, Cédric Thaury, Kim ta Phuoc, Benoit Mahieu, Igor Andriyash, Victor Malka, Xavier Davoine. 2017-11-23. High-brilliance betatron gamma-ray source powered by laser-accelerated electrons. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.120.254802

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