Study of silver Kα and bremsstrahlung radiation from short-pulse laser-matter interactions with applications for x-ray radiography

Measurements of Kα radiation yield and x-ray bremsstrahlung emission from thin-foil silver targets are presented. The targets were irradiated by a short pulse laser with intensities from 5×1016 to 1018 W/cm2 at 40 ps. Single hit charge-coupled device detectors, differential filter-stack detectors, and a crystal spectrometer were used to investigate the angular distribution of the Kα and bremsstrahlung x-rays. This study is the first to use a broadband detector to estimate the absolute numbers of Kα photons and to determine Kα to bremsstrahlung ratios. The relevance of this work in the context of x-ray diffraction and x-ray radiography is discussed.