Plasma-guided Compton source

We investigated numerically the emission properties of an x-ray source based on direct laser acceleration of electrons interacting with an intense counterpropagating laser pulse. The source was realized by irradiating from both sides a high atomic number plasma-plume target. The resulting x-ray beam was analyzed through three-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations for its spectral content, source size, angular divergence, and temporal structure. For simulated experiments in which the total laser-pulse energy was 1.5 J, we obtained a peak brightness of approximately ${10}^{22}\phantom{\rule{0.2em}{0ex}}(\mathrm{s}\phantom{\rule{0.2em}{0ex}}{\mathrm{mrad}}^{2}\phantom{\rule{0.2em}{0ex}}{\mathrm{mm}}^{2}\phantom{\rule{0.2em}{0ex}}0.1\mathrm{%}\mathrm{BW}{)}^{\ensuremath{-}1}$ of x-ray photons peaking at an energy of 25 keV. The results and their competitiveness in applications are discussed and compared with other laser-based x-ray generation methods.