Demonstration of a spatial filtering amplifier for high-order harmonics

Jean-Philippe Goddet (1) , Stéphane Sebban (1) , Anne-Sophie Morlens (1) , Julien Gautier (1) , Jean-Philippe Rousseau (1) , F. Burgy (1) , Philippe Zeitoun (1) , C. Valentin (1) , C. Hauri (1) , G. Maynard (2) , A. Boudaa (2) , J. P. Caumes (3) , H. Merdji (3) , T. Mocek (4) , M. Kozlova (4) , K. Jakubczak (4)

1 LOA - Laboratoire d'optique appliquée
2 LPGP - Laboratoire de physique des gaz et des plasmas
3 Centre d'Etudes de Saclay
4 Department of X-ray Lasers

We report what is to our knowledge the first demonstration of spatial filtering of a high-order harmonic beam into a soft-x-ray laser plasma amplifier at 32.8 nm. After amplification the seed energy is enhanced by a factor of 50, and the beam profile of the amplified beam exhibits an Airy-like shape due to the spatial filtering by the optical field ionized plasma. Moreover, the transverse coherence of the spatially filtered amplified beam is strongly enhanced, resulting in the generation of a peak coherent power of 0.9×10^5 to 1.8×10^5 W.

Domains: Optics [physics.optics]

Jean-Philippe Goddet, Stéphane Sebban, Anne-Sophie Morlens, Julien Gautier, Jean-Philippe Rousseau, et al.. Demonstration of a spatial filtering amplifier for high-order harmonics. Optics Letters, 2007, 32 (11), pp.1498-1500. ⟨10.1364/OL.32.001498⟩. ⟨hal-00515700⟩