Compton Sources for X/gamma Rays: Physics and Applications

Synchronized high brightness electron beams and high intensity lasers have become more and more available during the last decade, opening new possibilities for the generation of X and g ray beams. And stimulating scientists at several laboratories worldwide to conceive, design and operate Compton Sources for high flux generation of X and g Rays with unprecedented characteristics of brilliance, tunability, high monochromaticity and rapidity, with radiation pulses in the psec to fsec duration range and fluxes of 1011 photons/sec and higher, within a narrow bandwidth. It is worth to remind that these radiation sources have been a relevant subject in all the ICFA workshop of the series “The physics and applications of high brightness electron beams”, since the first held in 1999 at UCLA, as they are capable of harder photon production than other sources like FEL’s or synchrotron light sources, hence they are candidates not only for X-ray sources, but also for high-energy physics applications (e.g. production of polarized positron beams for e+/e- colliders). However, Compton Sources are playing an increasingly critical role for advanced applications in frontier fields like radiological imaging, material studies, national security, mainly due to their unique properties, which, in turns, represent also a great challenge to the detection and analysis apparatus. For this reason we feel that it’s time to gather the two communities of potential users and source designers within the frame a dedicated meeting: the goal of this workshop will be therefore to provide a comparative study of the generation, manipulation, modeling and measuring of high peak/average flux photon beams by Compton Sources, as well as the underlying methods linking the physics of these beam systems to the physics of their advanced applications.