Micromachining of Permanent Magnet Undulator Structures for Compact X-ray Sources

Research Objective

To investigate the use of advanced microfabrication technologies and MEMS-enabled magnetization methods in developing reduced-scale permanent magnet undulator structures (with fine pole pitch ~5 microns) while maintaining reasonable magnetic field strengths as well as efficient generation of brilliant, high energy (>10keV) mono-energetic x-rays from modest electron beam source energies (~200MeV).

Theory

An accelerated beam of electrons with relativistic velocities experiences an undulation when passing through a spatially periodic magnetic field. This undulation of the beam trajectory results in the generation of electromagnetic radiation from which intense, tunable x-rays can be produced.