CONCEPTUAL DESIGN OF A COMPACT PHOTON SOURCE IN THE 1-100 KEV RANGE

A compact, very intense source of monochromatic X-rays, tunable in the 1-100 keV range, can be obtained by coupling a low energy (2-4 MeV), high current proton RFQ accelerator with an irradiation chamber provid ed with a multiple target system and collimator. Estimates of the phot on intensities achievable by 2 MeV-1 mA and 4 MeV-0.5 mA proton beams obtained from an RFQ indicate that such a compact source can provide f luxes larger than 10(13) s-1 sr-1 for X-ray energies up to about 6.4 k eV (iron primary target), in excess of 10(11) s-1 sr-1 for X-ray energ ies up to about 25 keV (antimony primary target) and still around 10(9 )-10(10) s-1 sr-1 for the hardest X-ray energies produced by the heavi est targets. These figures are from 4 to 6 orders of magnitude higher than those achievable by conventional systems.