X-ray generation in inverse capillary discharges forpumping

An inexpensive, tunable, filamentary X-ray generator, based on the bremsstrahlung of a pulsed, high-power-density electron beam cruising along a dielectric fiber is presented. At small scale, it encodes some of the features of an X-ray machine for triggering the energy stored in the long-lived ¹⁷⁸Hf^m2 nuclear isomer, in particular an optimum coupling to the active medium This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.