NUCLEAR PHOTO-SCIENCE AND APPLICATIONS WITH THOMSON- RADIATED EXTREME X-RAY (T-REX) SOURCES*

Recent advances in high brightness rf gun technology, coupled with novel laser systems and architecture have enabled the development of a new class of compact, tunable, monochromatic light sources capable of producing MeV photons with unprecedented brightness. Such new sources rely on Thomson scattering of incident photons produced by a TW-class laser off a bright relativistic electron beam to generate Doppler-upshifted photons in a highly collimated beam. Scaling laws [1] show that a frequency-doubled, 532 nm wavelength, 1 J, 10 ps Fourier transform-limited drive laser pulse interacting with a 250 MeV, 1 nC, 10 ps, 1 mm.mrad normalized emittance, with 0.1 % relative energy spread, can yield a 2.24 MeV γ-ray flash with a peak brightness exceeding 1023 photons/[mm2 x mrad2 x s x 0.1% bandwidth]. This number is> 15 orders of magnitude beyond the output of a third-generation synchrotron at the same photon energy. Above ~ 100 keV, the photons can interact with nuclei, and nuclear applications become viable. In this paper, we present a technical overview of T-REX sources and their capabilities, and give a few examples of potential applications of interest