Analysis of Extreme Light Infrastructure (ELI) Compton Spectra

This project explores the energy distribution of Compton scattering, a phenomenon which produces X-rays as a result of a wavelength shift in photon-electron collision. As high-energy photons collide with an electron beam, the photons scatter with different energies and wavelengths than incident. The goal of this project was calculating and verifying the spectral distributions near the Compton edge. Using new efficient code, referred to as the Statistical Treatment of Advanced Radiation Spectra (STARS), we reproduced and expanded on a simulation run by the Extreme Light Infrastructure (ELI) group for their preparation of the Variable Energy Gamma (VEGA) system. We fit an analytic expression for scattered energy to their spectral data of varying aperture sizes and expanded it by running narrower aperture simulations. Our results demonstrate that as aperture size decrease, the curve of the energy spectra becomes steeper and approaches a linear slope on the log scale. This study also supports the usage of our code and theory to simulate the energy of Compton scattering.