Description
Laser wakefield acceleration (LWFA) offers a way to accelerate electrons to high energies over very short distances, providing a compact alternative to conventional large-scale accelerators. The Gammatron beamline is designed to exploit this mechanism for the generation of short-wavelength, broadband X-ray radiation based on betatron emission.
In this setup, an intense laser pulse is focused into a plasma, where it drives a wakefield capable of accelerating electrons within just a few centimeters. As these electrons propagate through the plasma, they undergo transverse oscillations in the focusing fields and emit broadband X-ray radiation.
The Gammatron beamline enables systematic studies of the relationship between laser-plasma conditions and the resulting radiation properties. Control over parameters such as plasma density and laser pulse characteristics allows us to explore different regimes of electron acceleration and X-ray generation.
The generated radiation is used for phase-contrast imaging and tomography, where it can reveal structures that are not accessible with conventional absorption-based X-ray techniques. In addition, a pump–probe scheme is currently under development, combining infrared (IR) and second-harmonic generation (SHG) optical pumps with an X-ray probe to investigate dynamic processes.
Ongoing work focuses on improving control over the radiation properties, including spectrum, flux, and shot-to-shot reproducibility. This is an important step toward making LWFA-based X-ray sources more reliable and suitable for application-driven experiments in materials science, biomedical imaging, and chemical physics.
