A compact, bright and tunable CW source of soft X-rays

A bright, CW, tunable source of soft X-rays is proposed. The X-rays are obtained from the Compton backscattering of intense infrared laser radiation from a high quality electron beam. The incident infrared radiation is the intracavity beam in a high power Nd:YLF laser. This radiation is scatted from an relativistic electron beam generated by electrostatic accelerators. Such an X-ray source would constitute a low cost compact alternative to the more traditional synchrotron rings. bandwidth X-ray radiation can be obtained with the use of proper aperturing without the necessity of monochromators. Analytic expressions of the frequency spectrum of the radiation through a certain aperture, are given. These expressions are valid for small undulator parameter and large number of periods.