Tomographic imaging with an intense laser-driven MeV x-ray source*

Intense photon sources with energy >1 MeV are of significant interest for the radiography of dense objects in research, industry, and defense. One important application is point-projection imaging in tomographic non-destructive evaluation. Irradiation of a high-Z foil with an intense laser drives a large population of relativistic electrons, generating a bright, directed beam of high-energy Bremsstrahlung photons. We report on a source of >1 MeV photons driven by the ALEPH¹ laser at Colorado State University, featuring a source size below 0.1 mm. Small source size enables commensurately high image resolution in magnified point-projection radiography, not limited by detector-pixel size. We have exploited the high repetition rate of ALEPH to demonstrate high-resolution 2D radiography and tomographic imaging at 0.5 Hz (1000 views per complete rotation) of a complex object, which shows feasibility for tomography with that photon source. We present the image reconstruction and further characterization of the source.