Investigations of collisionally pumped optical field ionization soft-x-ray lasers

Stéphane Sebban (1) , Lee M. Upcraft (1) , Philippe Balcou (1) , Moana Pittman (1) , Romain Haroutunian (1) , Georges Grillon (1) , Constance Valentin (1) , Antoine Rousse (1) , Jean-Philippe Rousseau (1) , Laurent Notebaert (1) , Danièle Hulin (1) , Tomas Mocek (2) , Bedrich Rus (2) , David Ros (3) , Annie Klisnick (3) , Antoine Carillon (3) , Gérard Jamelot (3)

1 LOA - Laboratoire d'optique appliquée
2 PALS - Institute of Physics
3 Laboratoire de Spectroscopie Atomique et Ionique

We report recent investigations of optical field ionization soft-x-ray lasers. We generated the amplifying medium by focusing a circularly polarized 760-mJ, 30-fs 10-Hz Ti:sapphire laser system into a gas cell a few millimeters long filled with xenon or krypton gas. A gain of 67 cm^−1 on the 4d^95p–4d^95d transition at 41.8 nm in Pd-like xenon and a gain–length product of 15 have been inferred at saturation. This source delivers ∼5×10^9 photons per pulse. More recently we demonstrated lasing at 32.8 nm in Ni-like krypton. The influence of the pumping energy and the laser polarization on the lasing output as well as on the far-field pattern of the x-ray laser beam are reported and discussed.

Domains: Physics [physics]; Physics [physics]; Optics [physics.optics]

Stéphane Sebban, Lee M. Upcraft, Philippe Balcou, Moana Pittman, Romain Haroutunian, et al.. Investigations of collisionally pumped optical field ionization soft-x-ray lasers. Journal of the Optical Society of America B, 2003, 20 (1), pp.195-202. ⟨10.1364/JOSAB.20.000195⟩. ⟨hal-00523047⟩