Surface roughness-aided hard X-ray emission from carbon nanotubes

Abstract

Effcient low debris hard X-ray source based on multiwalled carbon nan-otubes (MWNT) irradiated by intense, femtosecond laser over an intensity range of 1015-1017 W cm-2 μm2 is reported. The MWNT targets yield two orders of magnitude higher X-rays (indicating signiflcant enhancement of laser coupling) and three orders of magnitude lower debris compared to conventional metallic targets under identical experimental conditions. The simple analytical model explains the basic experimental observations and also serves as a guide to design effcient targets to achieve low-debris laser plasma-based hard X-ray sources at low laser intensities suitable for multi-kHz operation. © Indian Academy of Sciences.