Abstract
We report x-ray emission caused by betatron motion of electrons in a laser wakefield accelerator driven by high intensity () laser pulse interaction with a 4-mm long helium gas-jet and study the role of collective oscillation of electrons as well as plasma density. The collective oscillations of electrons, inferred from the observed wavy pattern in the electron beam spectrum (up to 300 MeV) led to enhance peak x-ray flux which was found to be further enhanced at higher plasma densities. A similar correlation between the enhancement in x-ray emission and collective oscillation was also observed in nitrogen gas target. Possible physical pictures for the above observations are also suggested and discussed. For the helium gas jet target, the typically observed x-ray source brightness is in 0.1% BW, with a critical energy of . We have also demonstrated the application of the betatron x-ray source in high-resolution imaging.
1 More- Received 23 May 2022
- Accepted 7 September 2022
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevAccelBeams.25.090703
Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI.
Published by the American Physical Society