Efficient generation of Xe K-shell X rays by high-contrast interaction with submicrometer clusters

Hayashi, Yukio; Pirozhkov, A. S.; Kando, Masaki; Fukuda, Yuji; Faenov, A.*; Kawase, Keigo*; Pikuz, T.*; Nakamura, Tatsufumi; Kiriyama, Hiromitsu; Okada, Hajime; Bulanov, S. V.

The interaction between a 25 TW laser and Xe clusters at a peak intensity of 110 W/cm has been investigated. Xe K-shell X-rays, whose energies are approximately 30 keV, were clearly observed with a hard X-ray charge-coupled device (X-ray CCD) at 3.4 MPa. Moreover, we studied the yield of the Xe K-shell X-rays by changing the pulse duration of the laser at a constant laser energy, and found that the pulse duration of 40 fs is better than that of 300 fs for generating Xe K-shell X-rays.