Spectral characteristics of Compton backscattering sources. Linear and nonlinear modes

Compton backscattering (CBS) of laser photons by relativistic electrons is widely used to design X-ray and gamma sources with a bandwidth better than 1% using a tight collimation. In order to obtain a reasonable intensity of the resulting beam one has to increase power of a laser pulse simultaneously with narrowing of the waist in the interaction point. It can lead to nonlinearity of CBS process which is affected on spectral characteristics of the collimated gamma beam (so-called “red-shift” of the spectral line, emission of “soft” photons with energy much less than the spectral line energy). In this paper we have analyzed such an influence using Monte-Carlo technique and have shown that even weak nonlinearity should be taken into account if the gamma beam is formed by a narrow aperture.