Mitigation of hard x-ray background in backlit pinhole imagers

Experiments were performed to mitigate thehard x-ray background commonly observed in backlit pinholeimagers. Thematerial of the scaffold holding the primary backlighter foil was varied to reduce the laser-plasma instabilities responsible forhot electrons and resultinghard x-ray background.Radiographic measurements withimage plates showed a factor of>25 decrease inx-rays between 30 and 67 keV when going from a plastic to Al or V scaffold. A potential design using V scaffold offers a signal-to-background ratio of 6:1, a factor of 2 greater than using the bare plastic scaffold.

Source: Review of Scientific Instruments - September 16, 2016 Category: Physics Authors: J. R. Fein, P. A. Keiter, J. P. Holloway, S. R. Klein, J. S. Davis and R. P. Drake Source Type: research