Design and calibration of an elliptical crystal spectrometer for the diagnosis of proton-induced x-ray emission (PIXE)

Laser-driven proton-induced x-ray emission (laser-PIXE) is a nuclear analysis method based on the compact laser ion accelerator. Due to the transient process of ion acceleration, the laser-PIXE signals are usually spurted within nanoseconds and accompanied by strong electromagnetic pulses (EMP), so traditional multi-channel detectors are no longer applicable. In this work, we designed a reflective elliptical crystal spectrometer for the diagnosis of laser-PIXE. The device can detect the energy range of 1 keV-11 keV with a high resolution. A calibration experiment was completed on the electrostatic accelerator of Peking University using samples of Al, Ti, Cu, and ceramic artifacts.