Collimated ultrabright gamma rays from electron wiggling along a petawatt laser-irradiated wire in the QED regime

Abstract

SignificanceEven though bright X-rays below mega-electron volt photon energy can be obtained from X-ray free electron lasers and synchrotron radiation facilities, it remains a great challenge to generate collimated bright gamma-ray beams over 10 mega-electron volts. We propose a scheme to efficiently generate such beams from submicron wires irradiated by petawatt lasers, where electron accelerating and wiggling are achieved simultaneously. With significant quantum electrodynamics effects existing even with petawatt lasers, our full 3D simulations show that directional gamma rays can be generated with thousand-fold higher brilliance and thousand-fold higher photon energy than those from synchrotron radiation facilities. In addition, the photon yield efficiency approaches 10%, 100,000-fold higher than those typical from betatron radiation and Compton scattering based on laser-wakefield accelerators.

Effects of simulation dimensionality on laser-driven electron acceleration and photon emission in hollow micro-channel targets

“…The interaction of high-power ultra-intense lasers and structured (both nanostructured [1][2][3][4][5][6][7] and microstructured [8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18] ) targets has been a topic of great interest for its capability of enhancing the laser energy conversion efficiency 1 , high-order harmonics generation 19,20 , charged particles (relativistic electrons and ions 3,4,18 ) acceleration and the production of X-ray 1,[21][22][23] to γ-ray 15,16,24 radiation. The produced charged particle and photon beams have a wide range of applications from medical ion therapy 25,26 , nuclear physics 27,28 to photon-photon pair production [29][30][31] .…”

Extremely brilliant GeV γ-rays from a two-stage laser-plasma accelerator

“…Continuous development in ultrahigh-power laser technology (32) provides possibilities for producing brilliant high-energy -ray sources. So far, considerable theory and simulation efforts have been made to develop such photon sources, based on emission of energetic electrons accelerated in extreme laser fields, such as laser interactions with near-critical-density plasmas (33)(34)(35), laser-driven radiation reactions (36)(37)(38), laser-irradiated solid interactions (39)(40)(41), laser scattering off electrons (42,43), and the excitation of electromagnetic cascades (44,45). However, there are unavoidable physical limitations on the -ray peak brilliance with these methods, such as a very large divergence in direct laser interaction with electrons.…”

The data-driven future of high-energy-density physics

“…HEDP experiments are also at the forefront of the development of new classes of particle accelerators 9 (e.g. Laser Wakefield acceleration 10 , bright gamma ray sources 11 , laser-driven ion acceleration 12 and highly efficient neutron generation 13 ) with wide ranging application across science including condensed matter physics, material science, and biomedical imaging 14 . Finally, the high temperatures and pressures of HEDP are one way to make nuclear fusion as a clean industrial power source a reality via inertial confinement fusion 15…”