High photon flux Kα Mo x-ray source driven by a multi-terawatt femtosecond laser at 100 Hz.

We develop a pulsed hard x-ray Kα source at 17.4 keV produced by the interaction of a multi-terawatt peak power infrared femtosecond laser pulse with a thick molybdenum (Mo) target at a 100 Hz repetition rate. We measure the highest Mo Kα photon production reported to date corresponding to a Kα photon flux of 1×1011  ph/(sr·s) and an estimated peak brightness of ∼2.5×1017  ph/(s·mm2·mrad2(0.1% bandwidth)) at ∼5×1018  W/cm2 driving laser intensity.