The Extreme Light Infrastructure ERIC
EU

Plasma X-Ray Source (PXS)

The PXS source is based on the interaction of focused ultrashort laser pulses and liquid metal targets. The resulting plasma emits ultrashort, high brightness X-ray pulses with durations of a few hundreds of femtoseconds.

The PXS beam line operates with the L1.1 laser beam measuring 50 mm in diameter (1/e2) and achieves maximum conversion efficiency of the available laser energy to femtosecond pulses of X-ray radiation in the spectral range of 4–30 keV. Using an off-axis parabola, the laser beam is focused onto the continuously restoring solid-density target, enabling long-term 1 kHz operation of the beam line. The beam delivery chamber and the plasma interaction chamber are separated by an anti-reflection (AR)-coated quartz window to suppress contamination of the beam transport system by debris. Several diagnostics will be implemented in order to monitor the driving laser beam and the output X-ray radiation:

  • An imaging system to monitor the position and spatial profile of the visible emission from the plasma plume
  • A focal spot imaging system to monitor the focusing of the attenuated driving laser beam
  • An X-ray spectrometer, consisting of an X-ray photodiode, an amplifier, and a digital pulse processor unit for 1) shot-to-shot pulse energy measurement and 2) emission spectra measurement.

The X-ray output port has three output Beryllium windows: two for user end-stations and one for the X-ray emission monitor.

Petr Brůža petr.bruza@eli-beams.eu

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