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MeV bremsstrahlung X rays from intense laser interaction with solid foils

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 January 2019

S. Palaniyappan*
Affiliation:
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545, USA
D. C. Gautier
Affiliation:
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545, USA
B. J. Tobias
Affiliation:
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545, USA
J. C. Fernandez
Affiliation:
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545, USA
J. Mendez
Affiliation:
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545, USA
T. Burris-Mog
Affiliation:
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545, USA
C. K. Huang
Affiliation:
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545, USA
A. Favalli
Affiliation:
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545, USA
J. F. Hunter
Affiliation:
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545, USA
M. E. Espy
Affiliation:
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545, USA
D. W. Schmidt
Affiliation:
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545, USA
R. O. Nelson
Affiliation:
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545, USA
A. Sefkow
Affiliation:
University of Rochester, New York 14627, USA
T. Shimada
Affiliation:
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545, USA
R. P. Johnson
Affiliation:
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545, USA
*
Author for correspondence: S. Palaniyappan, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM-87545, USA, E-mail: sasi@lanl.gov

Abstract

Laser-based compact MeV X-ray sources are useful for a variety of applications such as radiography and active interrogation of nuclear materials. MeV X rays are typically generated by impinging the intense laser onto ~mm-thick high-Z foil. Here, we have characterized such a MeV X-ray source from 120 TW (80 J, 650 fs) laser interaction with a 1 mm-thick tantalum foil. Our measurements show X-ray temperature of 2.5 MeV, flux of 3 × 1012 photons/sr/shot, beam divergence of ~0.1 sr, conversion efficiency of ~1%, that is, ~1 J of MeV X rays out of 80 J incident laser, and source size of 80 m. Our measurement also shows that MeV X-ray yield and temperature is largely insensitive to nanosecond laser contrasts up to 10−5. Also, preliminary measurements of similar MeV X-ray source using a double-foil scheme, where the laser-driven hot electrons from a thin foil undergoing relativistic transparency impinging onto a second high-Z converter foil separated by 50–400 m, show MeV X-ray yield more than an order of magnitude lower compared with the single-foil results.

Information

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019 
Figure 0

Fig. 1. Schematic representation of experimental setup (f/3 laser focus onto 110 nm Al foil). (a) The 0.12 PW Trident laser is focused with f/3 off-axis-parabola (peak intensity – 2 × 1020 W/cm2) onto a 1 mm-thick tantalum foil (foil normal rotated 10° off to laser propagation axis). The tantalum foil acts both as electron source and X-ray converter. A 0.2 T magnet deflects the charged particles away. The X-ray transmission through the tungsten wedge (5.08 cm × 5.08 cm × 17.8 cm) is measured using a calibrated BAS-SR Fuji image plate (20 cm × 40 cm). The image plate was covered with a 0.5 mm-thick tantalum sheet (20 cm × 40 cm) to block X rays below 92 keV (<1% transmission at 92 keV) reaching the image plate detector. The X-ray spectrum is retrieved from the transmission data via Expectation-Maximization algorithm. (b) Double-foil scheme: same setup as before except the laser impinges onto a 110 nm-thick aluminum foil. The electron beam from the aluminum foil subsequently impinges onto a 1 mm-thick tantalum X-ray converter foil. The spacing between the foils was varied from 50 to 400 µm. (b) Schematic representation of the magnetic electron spectrometer used to measure the electron spectrum from 110 nm Al foil. A 1 mm diameter tungsten pinhole was placed 15 cm away from the converter foil to sample the electron beam.

Figure 1

Fig. 2. Results from single target setup. (a) Measured X-ray spectrum from single 1 mm-thick tantalum foil. (b) Closer view of the same X-ray spectrum showing spectral peaks at 67 and 210 keV.

Figure 2

Fig. 3. Effect of laser contrast on X-ray spectrum from single 1 mm-thick tantalum foil. A 1 ns-long pedestal at various laser intensity levels were added to the high-contrast Trident laser. Measured X-ray spectra when added (a) 10−5 pedestal, (b) 10−6 pedestal, and (c) 10−7 pedestal.

Figure 3

Fig. 4. Results from double target setup. (a) Measured electron spectrum from 100 nm-thick aluminum foil using a magnetic spectrometer. (b) Measured X-ray spectrum from double target (100 nm-thick aluminum foil ~200 µm away from 1 mm-thick tantalum converter foil). (c) Zoomed in view of the same X-ray spectrum showing spectral peaks at 67 and 210 keV. (d) Simulated X-ray spectrum using measured electron spectrum as input to Monte-Carlo algorithm MCNP.

Figure 4

Fig. 5. MeV X-ray radiograph. (a) 10 cm × 10 cm × 6 mm tungsten object called “R2DTO” with radial slots used for measuring the MeV X-ray source size, (b) radiograph of R2DTO taken using MeV X rays from the double-foil scheme with 1:1 magnification, (c) radiograph of the same object using MeV X rays from the single-foil scheme with 6.2 × magnification.