Development and Applications of a Laser-Wakefield X-ray Source (updated)
In laser-wakefield acceleration (LWFA), a femtosecond laser pulse is tightly focused in a gas to intensities exceeding 1018 W/cm2 . The laser radiation ionizes the medium and excites a plasma wave that travels behind the laser pulse. Electrons can be trapped in the oscillations in the plasma density, where electric fields of the order of several hundreds of GV/m accelerate them to relativistic ene