Gamma-ray emission from wakefield-accelerated electrons wiggling in a laser field

Jie Feng; Yifei Li; Jinguang Wang; Dazhang Li; Fang Li; Wenchao Yan; Weimin Wang; Liming Chen

doi:10.1038/s41598-019-38777-3

Gamma-ray emission from wakefield-accelerated electrons wiggling in a laser field

Sci Rep. 2019 Feb 21;9(1):2531. doi: 10.1038/s41598-019-38777-3.

Authors

Jie Feng^{1

2}, Yifei Li¹, Jinguang Wang^{1

2}, Dazhang Li^{1

3}, Fang Li⁴, Wenchao Yan⁵, Weimin Wang¹, Liming Chen^{6

7

8

9}

Affiliations

¹ Beijing National Research Center of Condensed Matter Physics, Institute of Physics, CAS, Beijing, 100190, China.
² University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
³ Institute of High Energy Physics, CAS, Beijing, 100049, China.
⁴ The National Astronomical Observatories, CAS, Beijing, 100012, China.
⁵ Institute of Physics ASCR, v.v.i. (FZU), ELI BEAMLINES, Za Radnicí 835, Dolni Brezany, 252241, Czech Republic.
⁶ Beijing National Research Center of Condensed Matter Physics, Institute of Physics, CAS, Beijing, 100190, China. lmchen@iphy.ac.cn.
⁷ University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China. lmchen@iphy.ac.cn.
⁸ Key Laboratory for Laser Plasmas (MoE) and Department of Physics and Astronomy, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, 200240, China. lmchen@iphy.ac.cn.
⁹ Songshan Lake Materials Laboratory, Dongguan, Guangdong, 523808, China. lmchen@iphy.ac.cn.

Abstract

Ultra-fast synchrotron radiation emission can arise from the transverse betatron motion of an electron in a laser plasma wakefield, and the radiation spectral peak is limited to tens of keV. Here, we present a new method for achieving high-energy radiation via accelerated electrons wiggling in an additional laser field whose intensity is one order of magnitude higher than that for the self-generated transverse field of the bubble, resulting in an equivalent wiggler strength parameter K increase of approximately twenty times. By calculating synchrotron radiation, we acquired a peak brightness for the case of the laser wiggler field of 1.2 × 10²³ ph/s/mrad²/mm²/0.1%BW at 1 MeV. Such a high brilliance and ultra-fast gamma-ray source could be applied to time-resolved probing of dense materials and the production of medical radioisotopes.