X-ray beam source from a Self-modulated laser wakefield accelerator

To diagnose material properties under extreme conditions of temperature and pressure the development of a directional, small-divergence, small source size and short pulse duration x-ray source has become essential. In this work we explore through experiments and PIC simulations the betatron radiation generated in self-modulated laser-wakefield accelerators. The experiment was preformed at the Jupiter Laser Facility, LLNL where electrons with energies up to 200 MeV and Betatron x-rays with critical energies \textgreater 10 keV were observed. OSIRIS 2D PIC simulations indicate that the x-ray critical energy directly scales with the a$_{0}$ of the laser and can easily be increased to critical energies exceeding 50 keV using a laser with a$_{0}$ of 3.