Bright spatially coherent synchrotron X-rays from a table-top source

• Published in: Nature physics Vol. 6; no. 12; pp. 980 - 983
• Main Authors: Kneip, S, Najmudin, Z, McGuffey, C, Martins, J. L, Martins, S. F, Bellei, C, Chvykov, V, Dollar, F, Fonseca, R, Huntington, C, Kalintchenko, G, Maksimchuk, A, Mangles, S. P. D, Matsuoka, T, Nagel, S. R, Palmer, C. A. J, Schreiber, J, Phuoc, K. Ta, Thomas, A. G. R, Yanovsky, V, Silva, L. O, Krushelnick, K
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 01.12.2010; Nature Publishing Group
• Subjects: Accelerators; Atomic; Beams (radiation); Classical and Continuum Physics; Coherence; Complex Systems; Condensed Matter Physics; Deoxyribonucleic acid; DNA; Electron beams; Electrons; Energy; Femtosecond; letter; Mathematical and Computational Physics; Miniaturization; Molecular; Optical and Plasma Physics; Optics; Physics; Physics and Astronomy; Plasma accelerators; Plasma physics; Synchrotrons; Technological change; Theoretical; X-ray sources; X-rays
• ISSN: 1745-2473; 1745-2481; 1476-4636
• DOI: 10.1038/nphys1789

Each successive generation of X-ray machines has opened up new frontiers in science, such as the first radiographs and the determination of the structure of DNA. State-of-the-art X-ray sources can now produce coherent high-brightness X-rays of greater than kiloelectronvolt energy and promise a new revolution in imaging complex systems on nanometre and femtosecond scales. Despite the demand, only a few dedicated synchrotron facilities exist worldwide, in part because of the size and cost of conventional (accelerator) technology. Here we demonstrate the use of a new generation of laser-driven plasma accelerators, which accelerate high-charge electron beams to high energy in short distances, to produce directional, spatially coherent, intrinsically ultrafast beams of hard X-rays. This reduces the size of the synchrotron source from the tens of metres to the centimetre scale, simultaneously accelerating and wiggling the electron beam. The resulting X-ray source is 1,000 times brighter than previously reported plasma wigglers and thus has the potential to facilitate a myriad of uses across the whole spectrum of light-source applications.