A Bright Spatially-Coherent Compact X-ray Synchrotron Source

Each successive generation of x-ray machines has opened up new frontiers in science, such as the first radiographs and the determination of the structure of DNA. State-of-the-art x-ray sources can now produce coherent high brightness keV x-rays and promise a new revolution in imaging complex systems...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:arXiv.org 2009-12
Main Authors: Kneip, S, McGuffey, C, Martins, J L, Martins, S F, Bellei, C, Chvykov, V, Dollar, F, Fonseca, R, Huntington, C, Kalintchenko, G, Maksimchuk, A, Mangles, S P D, Matsuoka, T, Nagel, S R, Palmer, C, Schreiber, J, K Ta Phuoc, Thomas, A G R, Yanovsky, V, Silva, L O, Krushelnick, K, Najmudin, Z
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Coherence
Collimation
Complex systems
Deoxyribonucleic acid
DNA
Electron beams
Radiographs
State of the art
X ray sources
X-rays
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Summary:Each successive generation of x-ray machines has opened up new frontiers in science, such as the first radiographs and the determination of the structure of DNA. State-of-the-art x-ray sources can now produce coherent high brightness keV x-rays and promise a new revolution in imaging complex systems on nanometre and femtosecond scales. Despite the demand, only a few dedicated synchrotron facilities exist worldwide, partially due the size and cost of conventional (accelerator) technology. Here we demonstrate the use of a recently developed compact laser-plasma accelerator to produce a well-collimated, spatially-coherent, intrinsically ultrafast source of hard x-rays. This method reduces the size of the synchrotron source from the tens of metres to centimetre scale, accelerating and wiggling a high electron charge simultaneously. This leads to a narrow-energy spread electron beam and x-ray source that is >1000 times brighter than previously reported plasma wiggler and thus has the potential to facilitate a myriad of uses across the whole spectrum of light-source applications.
ISSN:2331-8422