  Laser-driven radiation sources are attracting increasing attention for
several materials science applications. While laser-driven ions, electrons and
neutrons have already been considered to carry out the elemental
characterization of materials, the possibility to exploit high energy photons
remains unexplored. Indeed, the electrons generated by the interaction of an
ultra-intense laser pulse with a near-critical material can be turned into high
energy photons via bremsstrahlung emission when shot into a high-Z converter.
These photons could be effectively exploited to perform Photon Activation
Analysis (PAA). In the present work, the possibility to perform laser-driven
PAA is proposed and investigated. By means of a theoretical and numerical
approach, we identify the optimal near-critical material and converter
parameters for laser-driven PAA in a wide range of laser intensities. Finally,
exploiting the Monte Carlo and Particle-In-Cell tools, we simulate PAA
experiments performed with both conventional accelerators and laser-driven
sources.
