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A high-intensity highly coherent soft X-ray femtosecond laser seeded by a high harmonic beam

Philippe Zeitoun 1 Gabriel Faivre 1 Stéphane Sebban 1 Tomas Mocek 1 A. Hallou 1 Marta Fajardo 2 D. Aubert 3 Philippe Balcou 1 Frédéric Burgy 1 D. Douillet 1 S. Kazamias 4 G. de Lachèze-Murel 3 T. Lefrou 1 S. Le Pape 5 P. Mercère 1 Hamed Merdji 6 Anne-Sophie Morlens 1 Jean-Philippe Rousseau 1 C. Valentin 1
1 LOA - Laboratoire d'optique appliquée
2 Centro de Física dos Plasmas
3 DAM/DIF - DAM Île-de-France
4 LIXAM - Laboratoire d'interaction du rayonnement X avec la matière
5 LULI - Laboratoire pour l'utilisation des lasers intenses
6 SPAM - Service des Photons, Atomes et Molécules
Abstract : Synchrotrons have for decades provided invaluable sources of soft X-rays, the application of which has led to significant progress in many areas of science and technology. But future applications of soft X-rays—in structural biology, for example—anticipate the need for pulses with much shorter duration (femtoseconds) and much higher energy (millijoules) than those delivered by synchrotrons. Soft X-ray free-electron lasers1 should fulfil these requirements but will be limited in number; the pressure on beamtime is therefore likely to be considerable. Laser-driven soft X-ray sources offer a comparatively inexpensive and widely available alternative, but have encountered practical bottlenecks in the quest for high intensities. Here we establish and characterize a soft X-ray laser chain that shows how these bottlenecks can in principle be overcome. By combining the high optical quality available from high-harmonic laser sources (as a seed beam) with a highly energetic soft X-ray laser plasma amplifier, we produce a tabletop soft X-ray femtosecond laser operating at 10 Hz and exhibiting full saturation, high energy, high coherence and full polarization. This technique should be readily applicable on all existing laser-driven soft X-ray facilities.
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https://hal-polytechnique.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00522630
Contributor : Thuy Le <>
Submitted on : Friday, October 1, 2010 - 11:20:23 AM
Last modification on : Wednesday, September 16, 2020 - 4:53:43 PM

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CNRS | X-LULI | X | X-LOA | UPMC | DSM-IRAMIS | CEA | ENSTA_LOA | ENSTA | PARISTECH | SPAM | CEA-DRF | X-DEP-PHYS | DAM | SORBONNE-UNIVERSITE | SU-SCIENCES

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Philippe Zeitoun, Gabriel Faivre, Stéphane Sebban, Tomas Mocek, A. Hallou, et al.. A high-intensity highly coherent soft X-ray femtosecond laser seeded by a high harmonic beam. Nature, Nature Publishing Group, 2004, 431, pp.426-429. ⟨10.1038/nature02883⟩. ⟨hal-00522630⟩

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