2020/11/30 by C. Emma, Claudio Emma, Xinlu Xu +16 · 34 citations
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced X-ray Imaging Techniques #Attosecond #Electron #Laser #Laser-Plasma Interactions and Diagnostics #Particle Accelerators and Free-Electron Lasers #Particle accelerator #Plasma #Plasma acceleration #Radiation #Ultrashort pulse #physics.acc-ph #physics.plasm-ph
paper · pdf · open access · doi:10.1063/5.0050693
published in APL Photonics 6(7) (AIP Publishing)
openalex created_date 2020/11/23 · openalex publication_date 2021/07/01 · arxiv created 2021/08/09 · arxiv updated 2021/08/11 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Plasma accelerators can generate ultra-high-brightness electron beams that open the door to light sources with a smaller physical footprint and properties un-achievable with conventional accelerator technology. In this paper, we show that electron beams from Plasma WakeField Accelerators can generate few-cycle coherent tunable soft x-ray pulses with TW peak power and a duration of tens of attoseconds, an order of magnitude more powerful, shorter, and with better stability than state-of-the-art X-ray Free Electron Lasers (XFELs). Such a light source would significantly enhance the ability to experimentally investigate electron dynamics on ultrafast timescales, having a broad-ranging impact across multiple scientific fields. Rather than starting from noise as in typical XFELs, the x-ray emission in this approach is driven by coherent radiation from a pre-bunched, high peak current electron beam of attosecond duration. This relaxes the restrictive tolerances that have hindered progress toward utilizing plasma accelerators as coherent x-ray drivers thus far, presenting a new paradigm for advanced accelerator light source applications.