The 4th International Conference on Matter and Radiation at Extremes (ICMRE 2019)

591 / 2019-04-03 09:23:09

High quality X-ray/gamma-ray radiation from a plasma undulator

X-ray radiation,plasma undulator

Plenary track > Fundamental Physics at Extremes

In this talk, I would like to introduce the concept of a plasma undulator induced by the centroid oscillation of a laser pulse(s). Electrons injected in such an undulator will experience two kinds of oscillations, the betatron oscillation and the centroid oscillation. These two oscillations could become resonant when the initial conditions are matched, which greatly enhances the amplitude of the electron oscillation. The energy of the radiation can then extend up to the gamma-ray range, which provides a flexible and compact laser-driven plasma-based gamma-ray source. On the other hand, in a plasma undulator exited by high-order laser modes, we find that the electron betatron oscillation can be completely eliminated by choosing appropriate laser intensities of the modes, leading to a few percent radiation bandwidth. The strength of the undulator can reach unity, the undulator period can be less than a millimeter, and the total number of undulator periods can be significantly increased by phase locking and staging. In the fully beam loaded regime, the electron current in the undulator can reach 0.3 kA, making such an undulator a potential candidate towards a table-top FEL