Enhanced betatron radiation by a modulating laser pulse in laser wakefield acceleration

We propose a new idea to enhance and control the betatron radiation by using a modulating laser pulse in laser wakefield acceleration. In this scheme, a high-power laser pulse is used for self-trapping and acceleration of the plasma electrons and the accelerated electron beam is modulated by a separately-propagating laser pulse for large amplitude betatron oscillations and microbunching. In this way, the relatively low power modulating laser pulse can enhance the X-ray photon flux and energy significantly. We performed two-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations to demonstrate the idea and the results show that a sub-TW laser pulse is enough for electron beam modulation and it can generate easily-controllable fs X-ray pulses with a wide range of photon energies from soft X-rays to hard X-rays. •A new idea is proposed to enhance the betatron radiation in laser wakefield acceleration.•The proposed idea can produce higher X-ray energies and higher photon flux in small scale.•A moderately high power laser is enough to generate intense fs X-ray pulses.•The X-ray pulse characteristics can be easily controlled by adjusting the laser parameters.•The ultrashort X-ray pulses can be used to study ultrafast dynamics in science.