MeV bremsstrahlung X rays from intense laser interaction with solid foils

• DOI: 10.1017/s0263034618000551
• Publication Date: 2019-01-24T08:59:11Z
• Authors: S. Palaniyappan; D. C. Gautier; B. J. Tobias; J. C. Fernandez; J. Mendez; T. Burris-Mog; C. K. Huang; A. Favalli; J. F. Hunter; M. E. Espy; D. W. Schmidt; R. O. Nelson; A. Sefkow; T. Shimada; R. P. Johnson
• Keywords: 0103 physical sciences; 01 natural sciences; 7. Clean energy

Abstract Laser-based compact MeV X-ray sources are useful for a variety of applications such as radiography and active interrogation nuclear materials. X rays typically generated by impinging the intense laser onto ~mm-thick high-Z foil. Here, we have characterized source from 120 TW (80 J, 650 fs) interaction with 1 mm-thick tantalum Our measurements show temperature 2.5 MeV, flux 3 × 10 12 photons/sr/shot, beam divergence ~0.1 sr, conversion efficiency ~1%, that is, ~1 J out 80 incident laser, size m. measurement also shows yield is largely insensitive to nanosecond contrasts up −5 . Also, preliminary similar using double-foil scheme, where laser-driven hot electrons thin foil undergoing relativistic transparency second converter separated 50–400 m, more than an order magnitude lower compared single-foil results.