Undergraduate Research at Jefferson Lab

Calculating the Reduction Factor of an Inverse Compton Source

Student: Andrew Tom

School: Angelo State University

Mentored By: Balša Terzić and Geoffrey Krafft

An inverse Compton source (ICS) produces similar high flux x-rays for a fraction of the size and cost of a synchrotron. An ICS makes x-rays by colliding a monochromatic laser with a relativistic beam of electrons. Upon collision, the photons are scattered in the same direction as the momentum of the electron beam toward an aperture. The purpose of this project is to write code to calculate the reduction factor for a range of photon energies. Another focus is on comparing the calculations directly with the current simulation software, Improved Codes for Compton Simulation 3D (ICCS3D), to examine the time differences in the calculation. The equations used are analytically intractable, so python, along with some supporting libraries, were used to solve numerically for the reduction factor. This result gives important insight in how the aperture of the ICS affects the resulting x-rays.