Collimated ultrabright gamma rays from electron wiggling along a petawatt laser-irradiated wire in the QED regime
Abstract
Significance Even 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. Even though high-quality X- and gamma rays with photon energy below mega-electron volt (MeV) are available from large-scale X-ray free electron lasers and synchrotron radiation facilities, it remains a great challenge to generate bright gamma rays over 10 MeV. Recently, gamma rays with energies up to the MeV level were observed in Compton scattering experiments based on laser wakefield accelerators, but the yield efficiency was as low as 10−6, owing to low charge of the electron beam. Here, we propose a scheme to efficiently generate gamma rays of hundreds of MeV from…
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