Radiation Sources

Abstract

Deflection of a relativistic particle beam causes the emission of electromagnetic radiation which can be observed in the laboratory system as broadband radiation, highly collimated in the forward direction. The emission is related to the deflection of a charged particle beam and therefore sweeps like a search light across the detection apparatus of the observer. It is this shortness of the observable radiation pulse which implies that the radiation is detected as synchrotron radiation with a broad spectrum as shown in Fig. 3.3. The width of the spectrum is characterized by the critical photon energy (3.26) and depends only on the particle energy and the bending radius of the magnet. Generally, the radiation is produced in bending magnets of a storage ring, where an electron beam is circulating for hours.