A new high quality X-ray source for Cultural Heritage

Compton based photon sources have generated much interest since the rapid advance in laser and accelerator technologies has allowed envisaging their utilisation for ultra-compact radiation sources. These should provide X-ray short pulses with a relatively high average flux. Moreover, the univocal dependence between the scattered photon energy and its angle gives the possibility of obtaining a quasi-monochromatic beam with a simple diaphragm system. For the most ambitious projects the expected performance takes into account a rate of 10 12 – 10 13 photons/s, with an angular divergence of few mrad, an X-ray energy cut-off of few tens of keV and a bandwidth Δ E / E ∼ 1 – 10 % . Even if the integrated rate cannot compete with synchrotron radiation sources, the cost and the compactness of these Compton based machines make them attractive for a wide spectrum of applications. We explore here the interest of these systems for Cultural Heritage preservation.