INTERACTION OF RELATIVISTIC ELECTRONS WITH ULTRASHORT LASER-PULSES - GENERATION OF FEMTOSECOND X-RAYS AND MICROPROBING OF ELECTRON-BEAMS

The interaction of relativistic electrons with terawatt femtosecond la ser pulses is reviewed with emphasis on how the scattering process can be used as a source of ultrashort X-ray pulses and as a time-resolved diagnostic for measuring transverse and longitudinal phase space dist ributions of an electron beam with microns spatial and subpicosecond t emporal resolution, Recent experimental results are presented in which 90 degrees Thomson scattering was utilized to generate 300 fs duratio n pulses of X-rays with peak energy of 30 keV, It is shown that, throu gh analysis of the scattered X-ray beam properties, transverse and lon gitudinal distributions of the electron beam can be obtained.