How is General (braking) radiation produced?

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General radiation (bremsstrahlung) comes from fast electrons being decelerated in the electric field of a nucleus in the target material. When an incident electron passes close to a tungsten nucleus, the nucleus’ strong attraction causes the electron to slow down, and that loss of kinetic energy is emitted as an x-ray photon. In a dental x-ray tube, the high-speed electrons from the cathode strike the tungsten target, and the deceleration in the nuclear field produces a continuous spectrum of x-rays because the energy of the emitted photon depends on how much the electron is slowed.

This is different from characteristic radiation, which happens when an inner-shell electron is ejected and another electron fills the vacancy with the emission of a photon, and it’s also not produced by a process where electrons pass through the nucleus without interaction or by simply accelerating away from the nucleus.