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MeV bremsstrahlung X rays from intense laser interaction with solid foils

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 January 2019

S. Palaniyappan Open the ORCID record for S. Palaniyappan [Opens in a new window] ,
D. C. Gautier ,
B. J. Tobias ,
J. C. Fernandez ,
J. Mendez ,
T. Burris-Mog ,
C. K. Huang ,
A. Favalli ,
J. F. Hunter  and
M. E. Espy
...Show all authors
S. Palaniyappan*
Affiliation:
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545, USA
D. C. Gautier
Affiliation:
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545, USA
B. J. Tobias
Affiliation:
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545, USA
J. C. Fernandez
Affiliation:
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545, USA
J. Mendez
Affiliation:
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545, USA
T. Burris-Mog
Affiliation:
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545, USA
C. K. Huang
Affiliation:
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545, USA
A. Favalli
Affiliation:
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545, USA
J. F. Hunter
Affiliation:
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545, USA
M. E. Espy
Affiliation:
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545, USA
D. W. Schmidt
Affiliation:
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545, USA
R. O. Nelson
Affiliation:
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545, USA
A. Sefkow
Affiliation:
University of Rochester, New York 14627, USA
T. Shimada
Affiliation:
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545, USA
R. P. Johnson
Affiliation:
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545, USA
*
Author for correspondence: S. Palaniyappan, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM-87545, USA, E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

Laser-based compact MeV X-ray sources are useful for a variety of applications such as radiography and active interrogation of nuclear materials. MeV X rays are typically generated by impinging the intense laser onto ~mm-thick high-Z foil. Here, we have characterized such a MeV X-ray source from 120 TW (80 J, 650 fs) laser interaction with a 1 mm-thick tantalum foil. Our measurements show X-ray temperature of 2.5 MeV, flux of 3 × 1012 photons/sr/shot, beam divergence of ~0.1 sr, conversion efficiency of ~1%, that is, ~1 J of MeV X rays out of 80 J incident laser, and source size of 80 m. Our measurement also shows that MeV X-ray yield and temperature is largely insensitive to nanosecond laser contrasts up to 10−5. Also, preliminary measurements of similar MeV X-ray source using a double-foil scheme, where the laser-driven hot electrons from a thin foil undergoing relativistic transparency impinging onto a second high-Z converter foil separated by 50–400 m, show MeV X-ray yield more than an order of magnitude lower compared with the single-foil results.

Keywords

Intense laser–plasmaMeV X-ray radiography
Type
Research Article
Information
Laser and Particle Beams , Volume 36 , Issue 4 , December 2018 , pp. 502 - 506
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019 

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