Can Laser Pulses Produce MeV Gamma Rays?

[David lopez]

i already know radioactivity produces gamma rays. Are there other ways to produce gamma rays in a laboratory, without radioactive substances?

 

[BvU]

With a flashlight ?
Or a Roentgen tube ?

 

[David lopez]

i don't think a flashlight can produce gamma rays. i don't know what a roentgen tube is.

 

[David lopez]

i just want to know if there are any processes that can produce gamma rays, other than radioactivity?

 

[mathman]

Gamma rays are too high frequency to be produced by other than nuclear reactions.

 

[phyzguy]

Gamma rays are too high frequency to be produced by other than nuclear reactions.

I must disagree. Photons are produced by bremsstrahlung when energetic charged particles impact on a solid target. The higher the energy of the charged particle, the higher the energy of the photons. Accelerators, even fairly simple ones, can produce charged particle beams of millions of electron volts and above. When these beams are directed at a solid target, the photon energies can be millions of eV or more. Photons with more than 1 MeV of energy are what we call gamma rays.

 

[mfb]

Particle accelerators have various ways to produce gamma rays.

Particles hitting a fixed target can produce them, colliders can produce them in collisions, low energy photons scattering off high energy particles (especially electrons) can become gamma rays.

 

[DEvens]

Exactly this topic was discussed in another thread. The basic idea is, you have an electron accelerator with electrons going this-way. And you pulse photons in from a laser going that-way. The photons scatter off the electrons and you can get photons at MeV or higher. Getting photons in the several-MeV range is not too tough.

https://www.physicsforums.com/threa...e-of-nuclear-waste-to-just-30-minutes.979756/