Plasma accelerator-based ultrabright x-ray beams from ultrabright electron beams

Advances in Laboratory-based X-Ray Sources, Optics, and Applications VII : [Proceedings] - SPIE, 2019. - ISBN 97815106291349781510629141 - doi:10.1117/12.2530976 Advances in Laboratory-based X-Ray Sources, Optics, and Applications VII, San Diego, United States, 11 Aug 2019 - 15 Aug 2019; SPIE 111100A (2019). doi:10.1117/12.2530976
We provide a pathway to compact ultrabright light sources, based on ultrabright, high energy electron beams emerging from a combination of plasma Wakefield acceleration and plasma photocathodes. While plasma acceleration is known to produce accelerating fields three or four orders of magnitude larger than conventional accelerators, the plasma photocathode allows production of electron beams three or four orders of magnitude brighter than conventional, and thus is suitable to unleash the full potential of plasma accelerators. In particular, this is the case for various types of light sources, which profit enormously from an increased electron beam brightness. Building on the recent first experimental demonstration of the plasma photocathode, in this work we discuss the prospects of plasma photocathodes for key photon source approaches such as x-ray free-electron lasers, betatron radiation, ion-channel lasers and inverse Compton scattering.
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