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Relativistic plasmas

X-rays in a flash

X-rays enable the structure of matter to be imaged with near-atomic resolution, but the continuous output of conventional X-ray sources prevents rapidly evolving changes in the material's structure to be followed. The emission of a train of attosecond X-ray pulses from a laser-driven relativistic plasma could solve this limitation.

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Figure 1: Generating attosecond X-rays from a laser-driven relativistic plasma.

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Pukhov, A. X-rays in a flash. Nature Phys 2, 439–440 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys347

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