We recently were made aware of a study which investigated the X-ray emissions from a molybdenum target ablated by 35 femtosecond laser pulses – http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8010306/.

The authors found that the total emission can easily exceed the maximum annual equivalent dose of 1 mSv allowed within 60 minutes of irradiation.

The implication is that any laser operator using such high peak power laser outputs to process materials may be subjected to excessive X-ray emissions.

Many thanks to Dr Michal Wesolowski for bringing this to our attention.