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Anomalous nonlinear X-ray Compton scattering

Nature Physics volume 11, pages 964–970 (2015)Cite this article

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Abstract

X-ray scattering is typically used as a weak linear atomic-scale probe of matter. At high intensities, such as produced at free-electron lasers, nonlinearities can become important, and the probe may no longer be considered weak. Here we report the observation of one of the most fundamental nonlinear X-ray–matter interactions: the concerted nonlinear Compton scattering of two identical hard X-ray photons producing a single higher-energy photon. The X-ray intensity reached 4 × 1020 W cm−2, corresponding to an electric field well above the atomic unit of strength and within almost four orders of magnitude of the quantum-electrodynamic critical field. We measure a signal from solid beryllium that scales quadratically in intensity, consistent with simultaneous non-resonant two-photon scattering from nearly-free electrons. The high-energy photons show an anomalously large redshift that is incompatible with a free-electron approximation for the ground-state electron distribution, suggesting an enhanced nonlinearity for scattering at large momentum transfer.

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Figure 1: Experimental set-up.
Figure 2: Scattering signal as a function of the FEL fundamental pulse energy and scattering angle.
Figure 3: Dependence of nonlinear Compton scattering on sample position relative to the FEL focus.
Figure 4: Dependence of the high-energy photon signal on the FEL fundamental photon energy.
Figure 5: Anomalous two-photon bound-state Compton scattering mechanism.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported primarily by the US Department of Energy (DOE), Office of Basic Energy Sciences (BES) and the Volkswagen Foundation. Portions of this research were carried out at the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. Preparatory measurements were carried out at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource (SSRL). Both LCLS and SSRL are Office of Science User Facilities operated for the US Department of Energy Office of Science by Stanford University. M.F. acknowledges support from the Volkswagen Foundation. M.K. was supported by the DOE Office of Science Graduate Fellowship Program. M.T. and J.C. were supported by the Division of Materials Sciences and Engineering, BES, DOE under contract 51 DE-AC02-76SF00515. D.A.R., G.N. and S.Ghimire were supported by the AMOS program within the Chemical Sciences, Geosciences, and Biosciences Division, DOE, BES, DOE. We thank R. Santra for discussions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, Nebraska 68588, USA

    Matthias Fuchs

  2. Stanford PULSE Institute, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Menlo Park, California 94025, USA

    Matthias Fuchs, Mariano Trigo, Jian Chen, Shambhu Ghimire, Michael Kozina, Mason Jiang, Thomas Henighan, Crystal Bray, Georges Ndabashimiye, Philip H. Bucksbaum & David A. Reis

  3. Stanford Institute for Materials and Energy Sciences, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Menlo Park, California 94025, USA

    Mariano Trigo, Jian Chen, Michael Kozina, Mason Jiang, Thomas Henighan, Crystal Bray & David A. Reis

  4. Department of Physics, Institute for Nanotechnology and Advanced Materials, Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan 5290002, Israel

    Sharon Shwartz

  5. Linac Coherent Light Source, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, 2575 Sand Hill Road Menlo Park, California 94025, USA,

    Yiping Feng, Serge Guillet, Sébastien Boutet, Garth J. Williams, Marc Messerschmidt, M. Marvin Seibert, Stefan Moeller & Jerome B. Hastings

  6. SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Menlo Park, California 94025, USA

    Sven Herrmann, Gabriella A. Carini, Jack Pines, Philip Hart & Christopher Kenney

  7. BioXFEL NSF Science and Technology Center, 700 Ellicott Str., Buffalo, New York 14203, USA,

    Marc Messerschmidt

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Contributions

M.F. and D.A.R. conceived and with S.B., C.K., S.Guillet and J.B.H. designed the experiment. S.H., G.A.C., J.P., P.H., C.K., S.Guillet, S.B., G.J.W. and M.M. designed and fabricated the components of the experiment. M.F., M.T., J.C., S.Ghimire, S.S., M.K., M.J., T.H., C.B., G.N., Y.F., S.H., S.M., J.B.H. and D.A.R. carried out the experiment. S.B., G.J.W., M.M. and M.M.S. operated the coherent X-ray imaging instrument. M.F., M.T. and J.C. analysed the data. M.F. and D.A.R. interpreted the results with input from P.H.B., and M.F. and D.A.R. wrote the manuscript with input from all other authors.

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Correspondence to Matthias Fuchs.

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Fuchs, M., Trigo, M., Chen, J. et al. Anomalous nonlinear X-ray Compton scattering. Nature Phys 11, 964–970 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys3452

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