THA1WC02
UCLA, Los Angeles, California, USA
Compact monochromatic X-ray sources based on very high field acceleration and very short period undulators may revolutionize diverse advanced X-ray applications ranging from novel X-ray therapy techniques to active interrogation of materials, by making them accessible in cost and size. Such compactness may be obtained by an all-optical approach, which employs a laser-driven high gradient accelerator based on inverse free electron laser (IFEL), followed by an inverse Compton scattering (ICS) IP, a scheme where a laser is used as an undulator. We discuss experimental progress in understanding high-intensity effects in ICS, as well as the development of an efficient IFEL. We then describe the proof-of-principle of an all-optical IFEL-based system , where a TW-class CO2 laser pulse is split in two, with half used to accelerate a high quality electron beam up to 84 MeV through the IFEL interaction, and the other half acts as an electromagnetic undulator to generate up to 13 keV X-rays via ICS. These results demonstrate the feasibility of this scheme, which can be joined with other techniques such as laser recirculation to yield very compact, high brilliance, keV to MeV photon sources.
