High field assisted X-ray source

Summary form only given. Pulsed-power generators can efficiently deliver tens of megajoules of energy to a load. However, technological constrains clamp the delivery time to 100 ns. At the other end of the spectrum, petawatt lasers are limited to energy below a kilojoule. Yet they can deliver it on picosecond time scales. Combining both systems would greatly increase their versatility. For instance, one could imagine developing a high energy x-ray source (E>50 keV) where a pulsed-power generator would pre-ionize a high-Z gas to electron densities above 10
²⁰
cm
^-3
. Then, a high-power laser would push the ionization in the He-like regime only in a small channel surrounding the initial laser path. The bulk ionization, requiring copious amounts of energy, would be done by the pulsed-power machine. The rest of the ionization, requiring large electric fields, would be done locally by the laser.