The Munich Compact Light Source: initial performance measures

Abstract

While large-scale synchrotron sources provide a highly brilliant monochromatic X-ray beam, these X-ray sources are expensive in terms of installation and maintenance, and require large amounts of space due to the size of storage rings for GeV electrons. On the other hand, laboratory X-ray tube sources can easily be implemented in laboratories or hospitals with comparatively little cost, but their performance features a lower brilliance and a polychromatic spectrum creates problems with beam hardening artifacts for imaging experiments. Over the last decade, compact synchrotron sources based on inverse Compton scattering have evolved as one of the most promising types of laboratory-scale X-ray sources: they provide a performance and brilliance that lie in between those of large-scale synchrotron sources and X-ray tube sources, with significantly reduced financial and spatial requirements. These sources produce X-rays through the collision of relativistic electrons with infrared laser photons. In this study, an analysis of the performance, such as X-ray flux, source size and spectra, of the first commercially sold compact light source, the Munich Compact Light Source, is presented.

Emergent Properties of Microbial Activity in Heterogeneous Soil Microenvironments: Different Research Approaches Are Slowly Converging, Yet Major Challenges Remain

“…Some of these efforts have resulted in 2015 in the installation in Munich (Germany) of the first commercially available mini particle accelerator, or “compact light source” (Eggl et al, 2016). With a very small 5 by 3 m footprint, it produces X-rays through Compton scattering, resulting from the interaction of low energy electrons and a high-powered laser pulse.…”

Design study for a compact laser-driven source for medical x-ray fluorescence imaging

“…In recent years, the development of compact TS-based sources has become a wide research field. Different types of sources are investigated, driven by linear accelerators (linacs) [20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28], small-size synchrotrons (Lyncean [11,29], ThomX [30,31]) and laser-wakefield acceleration (LWFA) [32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42].…”

“…The reasons for this are manifold and will be discussed in detail in this paper. As a consequence, currently ≳nC bunch charges [26,29,31] and MHz repetition rates [27,29,31] appear necessary to reach high photon fluxes in state-of-the-art compact SR-based x-ray sources and modern CTs [7]. Current LWFA-TS sources [34][35][36][37]41] do not easily reach such parameters and are generally operated with ∼10-100 pC and at 1-10 Hz.…”

The Munich Compact Light Source: Flux Doubling and Source Position Stabilization At a Compact Inverse-Compton Synchrotron X-ray Source.

“…Depending on the Xray energy, an X-ray flux up to 1.5⋅10 10 ph/s was available on a daily basis after commissioning of the source in 2015. Corresponding source characterization is given in [8].With this source we could demonstrate advantages in biomedical imaging arising from the brilliance of the MuCLS [3,4,6]. Nevertheless, these studies also motivated us to pursue a further increase of X-ray flux, especially for time-sequence studies and micro-beam radiation therapy.…”

“…Figure 1 displays the corresponding X-ray source parameters over a period of 10 min. They were determined in the same way as in [8]. After initial optimization of the overlap of the laser and electron beam, the X-ray source position remains stable over short periods, but starts drifting on longer time scales typical for experiments, as depicted in Figure 2.…”