Synchrotron Radiation from a Laser Plasma Accelerator in the Bubble Regime

Kneip, Stefan and McGuffey, Christopher and Chvykov, Vladimir and Dollar, Franklin and Kalintchenko, Galina and Maksimchuk, Anatoly and Mangles, Stuart P. D. and Matsuoka, Takeshi and Nagel, Sabrina R. and Palmer, Charlotte Alexandra Jocelyn and Schreiber, Joerg and Phuoc, K. Ta and Thomas, Alexander George Roy and Krushelnick, Karl and Najmudin, Zulfikar (2010) Synchrotron Radiation from a Laser Plasma Accelerator in the Bubble Regime. AIP Conference Proceedings, 1299 (1). pp. 185-190. ISSN 0094-243X

Abstract

A laser wakefield accelerator is shown to operate in the highly non‐linear bubble regime, following the characteristic scaling of energy gain with density and leading to monoenergetic electron beams with up to 400 MeV and hundreds of pC charge. The bubble acts at the same time as a miniature undulator, causing the electrons to give off a beam of betatron x‐rays with milliradian divergence, μm source size, 1–100 keV photon energy and 1022 ph/mm2/mrad2s/0.1% BW.