Advanced Laser-Compton Gamma-Ray Sources for Nuclear Materials Detection, Assay and Imaging

摘要

Highly-collimated, polarized, mono-energetic beams of tunable gamma-rays may be created via the optimized Compton scattering of pulsed lasers off of ultra-bright, relativistic electron beams. Above 2 MeV, the peak brilliance of such sources can exceed that of the world's largest synchrotrons by more than 15 orders of magnitude and can enable for the first time the efficient pursuit of nuclear science and applications with photon beams, i.e. Nuclear Photonics. Potential applications are numerous and include isotope-specific nuclear materials management, element-specific medical radiography and radiology, non-destructive, isotope-specific, material assay and imaging, precision spectroscopy of nuclear resonances and photon-induced fission. This review covers activities at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory related to the design and optimization of mono-energetic, laser-Compton gamma-ray systems and introduces isotope-specific nuclear materials detection and assay applications enabled by them.