Observation of tunable parametric x-ray radiation emitted by laser-plasma electron beams interacting with crystalline structures

Abstract

Parametric x-ray radiation (PXR) is the quantum process analog to Laue diffraction where a pseudophoton is scattered out of a crystalline structure as a radiation photon. In this work, PXR emitted by electron beams generated in a compact laser-plasma accelerator and interacting afterward with a Si 220 crystal is observed in single-shot operations. The combination of laser wakefield acceleration and PXR is an efficient and table-top way to obtain monochromatic, pulsed, ultrashort, and stable emission of high-energy photons: to our knowledge such a complete set of performance parameters is new. Unlike other relevant radiation mechanisms, such as betatron radiation or incoherent bremsstrahlung, PXR is insensitive to the beam energy spread. With a long crystal, we demonstrate the stability of the PXR bandwidth toward shot-to-shot variations of the beam energy and divergence.