Production of a femtosecond X-ray pulse using an electron beam driven by laser-plasma acceleration and its applications to time-resolved X-ray diffraction

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We have demonstrated X-ray pulse generation via laser Compton scattering (LCS), which is the scattering of a femtosecond laser pulse off a quasi-monoenergetic electron (QME) beam with a narrow energy spread driven by laser-plasma acceleration. A well-collimated X-ray beam with a divergence angle of approximately 5 mrad is produced using a QME beam containing 70 pC electrons with an energy of 60 MeV in the monoenergetic peak. The X-ray photon number is estimated to be 2E+7 per pulse, which is comparable to that achieved in LCS X-ray sources using rf accelerators. The peak energy of the X-rays is estimated to be 60 keV by a numerical simulation using the measured characteristics of the QME beam. It is also suggested that the X-ray pulse duration is on the order of 100 fs.