In a dense gas plasma a short laser pulse propagates in a relativistic self-trapping mode, which enables the effective conversion of laser energy to the accelerated electrons. This regime sustains effective loading which maximizes the total charge of the accelerating electrons, that provides a large amount of betatron radiation. The three-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations demonstrate how such a regime triggers x-ray generation with 0.1–1 MeV photon energies, low divergence, and high brightness. It is shown that a 135-TW laser can be used to produce $3\times {10}^{10}$ photons of $>10$ keV energy and a 1.2-PW laser makes it possible generating about ${10}^{12}$ photons in the same energy range. The laser-to-gamma energy conversion efficiency is up to ${10}^{-4}$ for the high-energy photons, $\sim 100$ keV, while the conversion efficiency to the entire keV-range x rays is estimated to be a few tenths of a percent.

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• Laser driven electron acceleration
• Laser wakefield acceleration
• X-ray generation in plasmas