• DOI:10.1038/ncomms3421
• Corpus ID: 9310159

Optical control of hard X-ray polarization by electron injection in a laser wakefield accelerator

@article{Schnell2013OpticalCO,
  title={Optical control of hard X-ray polarization by electron injection in a laser wakefield accelerator},
  author={Michael Schnell and Alexander S{\"a}vert and Ingo Uschmann and Maria Reuter and Maria Nicolai and Tino K{\"a}mpfer and Bj{\"o}rn Landgraf and Oliver J{\"a}ckel and O. Jansen and Alexander Pukhov and Malte Christoph Kaluza and Christian Spielmann},
  journal={Nature Communications},
  year={2013},
  volume={4}
}

• M. Schnell, A. Sävert, +9 authors C. Spielmann
• Published 12 September 2013
• Physics
• Nature Communications

Laser-plasma particle accelerators could provide more compact sources of high-energy radiation than conventional accelerators. Moreover, because they deliver radiation in femtosecond pulses, they could improve the time resolution of X-ray absorption techniques. Here we show that we can measure and control the polarization of ultra-short, broad-band keV photon pulses emitted from a laser-plasma-based betatron source. The electron trajectories and hence the polarization of the emitted X-rays are experimentally controlled by the pulse-front tilt of the driving laser pulses. Particle-in-cell simulations show that an asymmetric plasma wave can be driven by a tilted pulse front and a non-symmetric intensity distribution of the focal spot. Both lead to a notable off-axis electron injection followed by collective electron–betatron oscillations. We expect that our method for an all-optical steering is not only useful for plasma-based X-ray sources but also has significance for future laser-based particle accelerators.