DOCUMENT METADATA
SLAC Technical Note: SLAC-TN-15-033
SLAC Release Date: August 27, 2015
Channeling, Volume Reection and Gamma Emission Using 14GeV Electrons in Bent Silicon Crystals - Final Paper
Benson, Brandon.
High energy electrons can be deflected with very tight bending radius using a bent silicon crystal. This
produces gamma radiation. As these crystals can be thin, a series of bent silicon crystals with alternating
direction has the potential to produce coherent gamma radiation with reasonable energy of the driving electron
beam. Such an electron crystal undulator offers the prospect for higher energy radiation at lower cost than
current methods. Permanent magnetic undulators like LCLS at SLAC Nat... Show Full Abstract
High energy electrons can be deflected with very tight bending radius using a bent silicon crystal. This
produces gamma radiation. As these crystals can be thin, a series of bent silicon crystals with alternating
direction has the potential to produce coherent gamma radiation with reasonable energy of the driving electron
beam. Such an electron crystal undulator offers the prospect for higher energy radiation at lower cost than
current methods. Permanent magnetic undulators like LCLS at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory are
expensive and very large (about 100 m in case of the LCLS undulator). Silicon crystals are inexpensive
and compact when compared to the large magnetic undulators. Additionally, such a high energy coherent
light source could be used for probing through materials currently impenetrable by x-rays. In this work
we present the experimental data and analysis of experiment T523 conducted at SLAC National Accelerator
Laboratory. We collected the spectrum of gamma ray emission from 14 GeV electrons on a bent silicon crystal
counting single photons. We also investigated the dynamics of electron motion in the crystal i.e. processes
of channeling and volume reflection at 14 GeV, extending and building off previous work. Our single photon
spectrum for the amorphous crystal orientation is consistent with bremsstrahlung radiation and the volume
reflection crystal orientation shows a trend consistent with synchrotron radiation at a critical energy of 740
MeV. We observe that in these two cases the data are consistent, but we make no further claims because of
statistical limitations. We also extended the known energy range of electron crystal dechanneling length and
channeling efficiency to 14 GeV.
Show Partial Abstract
Download File:
|