Muhammad Yousuf Soomro

Lecture No. 01
Home Work Problems in Synchrotron
Radiation

 
1 . Name a few different kinds of radiation sources; explain their
basic concepts for generating electromagnetic radiation and their
energy/wavelength regions.
Energy transmitted through space or through a material medium in the form of electromagnetic waves.
The term can also refer to the emission and propagation of such energy. Whenever an electric charge
oscillates or is accelerated, a disturbance characterized by the existence of electric and magnetic
fields propagates outward from it. This disturbance is called an electromagnetic wave.

Kinds of radiation sources

Natural Background Radiation

Man-Made Radiation

Natural Background Radiation Sources

 Cosmic Radiation
 Terrestrial Radiation
 Internal Radiation

Cosmic Radiation

Outer space is full of various types of radiation, such as heavily charged particles and gamma
rays.  Fortunately, Earth has an atmosphere that helps absorb and filter them out, which protects
us from high doses of cosmic radiation.  However, some radiation is able to make it through.  The
dose of cosmic radiation that you receive varies depending on the altitude of the area in which you
live.  Since air is thinner at higher elevations, less cosmic radiation is filtered out than it is at lower
altitudes with thicker air. 

Terrestrial Radiation

Radiation material found in Soil, Water, Vegetation.

Internal Radiation

 Potassium-40
 Carbon-14
 Lead-210
Man-made Radiation

Man-made radiation sources that result in an

exposure to members of the public:

 Tobacco
 Televisions
 Medical X-rays
 Smoke detectors
 Lantern mantles
 Nuclear medicine

 Building materials

Occupationally Exposed Individuals:

 Fuel cycle
 Radiography
 X-ray technicians
 Nuclear power plant
 U.S. NRC inspectors

 Nuclear medicine technicians

Radiowaves:
Electromagnetic waves longer (lower frequency) than microwaves are called "radio waves".
Electromagnetic radiation with shorter wavelengths may be called "millimeter waves", terahertz
radiation or even T-rays.

Microwaves:
Microwaves are electromagnetic waves with wavelengths ranging from as long as one meter to as
short as one millimeter, or equivalently, with frequencies between 300 MHz (0.3 GHz) and
300 GHz.

Sources:
Vacuum tube devices operate on the ballistic motion of electrons in a vacuum under the influence
of controlling electric or magnetic fields, and include the magnetron, klystron, traveling-wave tube
(TWT), and gyrotron. These devices work in the density modulated mode, rather than the current
modulated mode. This means that they work on the basis of clumps of electrons flying ballistically
through them, rather than using a continuous stream.

Infrared Light:
Infrared (IR) light is electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength between 0.7 and 300
micrometres, which equates to a frequency range between approximately 1 and 430 THz.

Visible Light:
The visible spectrum is the portion of the electromagnetic spectrum that is visible to (can be
detected by) the human eye. Electromagnetic radiation in this range of wavelengths is called visible
light or simply light. A typical human eye will respond to wavelengths from about 390 to 750 nm.
In terms of frequency, this corresponds to a band in the vicinity of 400–790 THz.

Ultraviolet light:
Ultraviolet (UV) light is electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength shorter than that of visible
light, but longer than X-rays, in the range 10 nm to 400 nm, and energies from 3eV to 124 eV. It is
so named because the spectrum consists of electromagnetic waves with frequencies higher than
those that humans identify as the color violet.

UV light is found in sunlight and is emitted by electric arcs and specialized lights such as black
lights. Classified as non-ionizing radiation, it can cause chemical reactions, and causes many
substances to glow or fluoresce. Most people are aware of the effects of UV through the painful
condition of sunburn, but the UV spectrum has many other effects, both beneficial and damaging,
to human health.

Sources:
Ultraviolet fluorescent lamps

Fluorescent lamps without a phosphorescent coating to convert UV to visible light, emit ultraviolet
light peaking at 294 nm due to the peak emission of the mercury within the bulb.

Ultraviolet LEDs

Light-emitting diodes (LEDs) can be manufactured to emit light in the ultraviolet range, although
practical LED arrays are very limited below 365 nm. LED efficiency at 365 nm is approx 5-8%,
whereas efficiency at 395 nm is closer to 20%, and power outputs at these longer UV wavelengths
are also better.

Ultraviolet lasers

UV laser diodes and UV solid-state lasers can be manufactured to emit light in the ultraviolet
range.

Gas-discharge lamps

Argon and deuterium lamps are often used as stable sources, either windowless or with various
windows such as magnesium fluoride.

X-Rays:
X-radiation (composed of X-rays) is a form of electromagnetic radiation. X-rays have a wavelength
in the range of 0.01 to 10 nanometers, corresponding to frequencies in the range 30 petahertz to
30 exahertz (3 × 1016 Hz to 3 × 1019 Hz) and energies in the range 120 eV to 120 keV. They are
shorter in wavelength than UV rays and longer than gamma rays.

X-rays from about 0.12 to 12 keV (10 to 0.10 nm wavelength) are classified as "soft" X-rays, and
from about 12 to 120 keV (0.10 to 0.01 nm wavelength) as "hard" X-rays, due to their penetrating
abilities.

Generation
X-rays are generated by an X-ray tube, a vacuum tube that uses a high voltage to accelerate the
electrons released by a hot cathode to a high velocity. The high velocity electrons collide with a
metal target, the anode, creating the X-rays. In medical X-ray tubes the target is usually tungsten
or a more crack-resistant alloy of rhenium (5%) and tungsten (95%), but sometimes molybdenum
for more specialized applications, such as when soft X-rays are needed as in mammography. In
crystallography, a copper target is most common, with cobalt often being used when fluorescence
from iron content in the sample might otherwise present a problem.

The maximum energy of the produced X-ray photon is limited by the energy of the incident
electron, which is equal to the voltage on the tube, so an 80 kV tube cannot create X-rays with an
energy greater than 80 keV. When the electrons hit the target, X-rays are created by two different
atomic processes:

Gamma Radiation:
Gamma radiation, also known as gamma rays (denoted as γ), is electromagnetic radiation of high
frequency (very short wavelength). Gamma rays typically have frequencies above 10 19 Hz, and
therefore have energies above 100 keV and wavelength less than 10 picometers, often smaller
than an atom. Gamma rays from radioactive decay commonly have energies of a few hundred keV,
and almost always less than 10 MeV. The upper limit for such energies is about 20 MeV, and there
is no lower limit.

Generation:
Gamma rays are produced by sub-atomic particle interactions such as electron-positron
annihilation, neutral pion decay, radioactive decay, fusion, fission or inverse Compton scattering in
astrophysical processes.

The Electromagnetic Spectrum

Radiation Wavelength (m) Frequency (Hz) Energy (J)

Radio waves > 0.1 < 3 x 109 < 2 x 10-24

Microwaves 10-3 - 3 x 109 - 2 x 10-24 -

0.1 3 x 1011 2 x 10-22

Infrared 7 x 10-7 - 3 x 1011 - 2 x 10-22 -

10-3 4 x 1014 3 x 10-19

4 x 10-7 - 4 x 1014 - 3 x 10-19 -

(visible light) 7 x 10-7 7.5 x 1014 5 x 10-19

Ultraviolet 10-8 - 7.5 x 1014 - 5 x 10-19 -

4 x 10-7 3 x 1016 2 x 10-17

X-rays 10-11 - 3 x 1016 - 2 x 10-17 -

10-8 3 x 1019 2 x 10-14

Gamma rays < 10-11 > 3 x 1019 > 2 x 10-14

2 . Describe the characteristics of “Bremsstrahlung radiation” from
accelerating charged particles, how and when it is generated and
what it can used for.

Bremsstrahlung
Bremsstrahlung or braking radiation or deceleration radiation, is electromagnetic radiation
produced by the acceleration of a charged particle, such as an electron, when deflected by another
charged particle, such as an atomic nucleus.

Bremsstrahlung has a continuous spectrum, which becomes more intense and shifts toward higher
frequencies when the energy of the accelerated particles is increased.

Strictly speaking, bremsstrahlung refers to any radiation due to the acceleration of a charged
particle, which includes synchrotron radiation; however, it is frequently used in the more narrow
sense of radiation from electrons stopping in matter.

Characteristics:
These X-rays have a continuous spectrum. The intensity of the these X-rays increases linearly with
decreasing frequency, from zero at the energy of the incident electrons, the voltage on the X-ray
tube.

Sources of Bremsstrahlung

In an X-ray tube, electrons are accelerated in a vacuum by an electric field and shot into a piece of
metal called the "target". X-rays are emitted as the electrons slow down (decelerate) in the metal.
The output spectrum consists of a continuous spectrum of X-rays, with additional sharp peaks at
certain energies (see graph on right). The continuous spectrum is due to bremsstrahlung, while the
sharp peaks are characteristic X-rays associated with the atoms in the target. For this reason,
bremsstrahlung in this context is also called continuous X-rays.

Use of Bremsstrahlung:
 Use of bremsstrahlung radiation to monitor Y-90 tumor
 Use of Bremsstrahlung in Making Rapid Assays of Millicurie Amounts of Phosphorus-32
 Use of Bremsstrahlung in the Measurement of the Efficiency of Solid State Detectors.
 Use of bremsstrahlung and electron beams in the preoperative irradiation of breast cancer
with figure fields.
3 . Describe the difference between 1:st, 2:nd and 3:rd generation
of synchrotron radiation facilities. What is a 4:th generation radiation
source?

The theoretical basis for synchrotron radiation traces back to the time of Thomson's discovery of
the electron.

At GE, Pollack got permission to assemble a team to build a 70-MeV electron synchrotron to test
the idea. the machine was not fully shielded and the coating on the doughnut-shaped electron tube
was transparent, which allowed a technician to look around the shielding with a large mirror to
check for sparking in the tube. Instead, he saw a bright arc of light, which the GE group quickly
realized was actually coming from the electron beam. Subsequent measurements by the GE group
began the experimental establishment of its spectral and polarization properties.

The next step came with the 1956 experiments of Tomboulian and Hartman, who were granted a
two-week run at the 320-MeV electron synchrotron at Cornell. They also reported the first soft x-
ray spectroscopy experiments with synchrotron radiation, measuring the transmission of beryllium
and aluminum foils near the K and L edges.

The First Generation:

Establishment of SURF (Synchrotron Ultraviolet Radiation Facility) began the first generation of
synchrotron-radiation facilities, sometimes also called parasitic facilities because the accelerators
were built and usually operated primarily for high-energy or nuclear physics.

With synchrotron radiation available at wavelengths in the x-ray region down to 0.1 Å,
experimenters at Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY) in Hamburg were able to carefully
check the spectral distribution against Schwinger's theory, as well as begin absorption
measurements of metals and alkali halides and of photoemission in aluminum.

the next major advance was the development of electron storage rings, the basis for all of today's
synchrotron sources. In the 1950s, the Midwest Universities Research Association (MURA) was
formed to develop a proposal for a high-current accelerator for particle physics. As part of the
project, Mills and Rowe designed a 240-MeV storage ring, then a new idea, as a test bed for
advanced accelerator concepts. Politics intervened, however, and the decision was made in 1963 to
build a new high-energy accelerator in Illinois, a facility that became the Fermi National Accelerator
Laboratory. With this decision, MURA eventually dissolved, but in the meantime construction of the
storage ring proceeded.

THE SECOND GENERATION:

The larger storage rings just cited were electron-positron colliding-beam machines that were
operated to provide the highest possible collision rates without blowing up the beams, a Under
these conditions, parasitic operation meant a severely limited output of synchrotron radiation,
thereby motivating a clamor for storage rings designed for and dedicated to the production of
synchrotron radiation.

Elsewhere, some of the first-generation facilities gradually evolved toward second-generation

status by means of upgrades and agreements with laboratory managements to dedicate a fraction
and sometimes all of the yearly machine operations to synchrotron radiation as the high-energy
physics frontier advanced. The Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory at SLAC and HASYLAB
(Hamburger Synchrotronstrahlungslabor) at DESY are prime examples.

Major experimental developments

 Major enhancement of photoemission for studying the electronic structure of solids and
surfaces
 The development of extended x-ray absorption fine-structure spectroscopy for the
measurement of local atomic structure.

 The extension of high-resolution protein crystallography to small, difficult to grow, or

otherwise unstable samples

THE THIRD GENERATION: OPTIMIZED FOR BRIGHTNESS

Synchrotron users recognized that a new generation of storage rings with a still lower emittance
and long straight sections for undulators would permit achieving even higher brightness and with
it, a considerable degree of spatial coherence.

Beneficiaries of high brightness

Include those who need spatially resolved information, ranging from x-ray microscopy to
spectromicroscopy and those who need temporal resolution, as well as spectroscopists,
crystallographers, and anyone who needs to collect higher resolution data faster.

The European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) in Grenoble was the first of the third-
generation hard x-ray sources to operate, coming on line for experiments by users with a 6-GeV
storage ring and a partial complement of commissioned beamlines in 1994.

Among the long-wavelength sources, the Advanced Light Source at Berkeley (1.9 GeV) began its
scientific program in early 1994, as did the Synchrotrone Trieste (2.0 GeV) in Italy, followed by the
Synchrotron Radiation Research Center (1.3 GeV) in Hsinchu, Taiwan, and the Pohang Light Source
(2.0 GeV) in Pohang, Korea. These physically smaller machines (120 to 280 meters in
circumference) have fewer straight sections and therefore can service fewer insertion-device
beamlines than the larger machines, but since they are also less expensive, many more of them
have been and are being constructed around the world, from Canada in North America; to Brazil in
South America; to Japan, China, Thailand, and India in Asia; and to Sweden, Germany,
Switzerland, and other European countries.
THE FOURTH GENERATION

The race to develop a new generation of synchrotron radiation sources with vastly enhanced
performance has already beguns.

The candidate with the best scientific case for a fourth-generation source is the hard x-ray
(wavelength less than 1Å) free- electron laser (FEL) based on a very long undulator in a high-
energy electron linear accelerator. Such a device would have a peak brightness many orders of
magnitude beyond that of the third- generation sources, as well as pulse lengths of 100 fs or
shorter, and would be fully coherent.

Research and development on the many technical challenges that must be overcome are well
under way at many laboratories around the world. In the United States, effort is centering around
the multi-institutional "Linac Coherent Light Source" proposal to use 15-GeV electrons from the
SLAC linac as the source for a 1.5-Å FEL, which if successful would lay the foundation for a later
sub-angstrom x-ray FEL.

In Europe, HASYLAB at DESY is hosting the two-phase TTF-FEL project culminating in a device
operating at 6.4 Å several years from now. The project would pave the way to a still more
ambitious 0.1-Å FEL (TESLA-FEL) farther in the future.

5 . a) Graph the x-rays transmission curve, as a function of photon energy (100eV-10keV), for a

20µm thick kitchen aluminum foil to be used as a filter in an X-rays laboratory experiment.
(a)

0,5

0,4

0,3
Transmission

0,2

0,1

0,0

10 100 1000
Photon energy (eV)

(b). Do the same for a 50µm thick plastic food wrap (saran: CH2=CCL2) with total density
ρ=1.60g/cm3. Use a linear scale for the transmission (0-100%) and a log-scale for the photon energy .

Saran:the commercial name for polyvinylidene chloride (PVdCl). Polyvinylidene chloride is a

polymer derived from vinylidene chloride is an organochloride with the molecular formula C2H2Cl2.
 0,8

0,7

0,6

0,5
Transmission

0,4

0,3

0,2

0,1

0,0

-0,1
100 1000 10000
Photon Energy (eV)

Muhammad Yousuf Soomro