Gain dynamics in a soft X-ray laser ampli er perturbed by a strong injected X-ray eld

Journal Article · Wed Jan 01 00:00:00 EST 2014 · Nature Photonics

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2014.79· OSTI ID:1132357

Wang, Yong ^[1]; Wang, Shoujun ^[1]; Oliva, E ^[2]; Lu, L ^[2]; Berrill, Mark A ^[3]; Yin, Liang ^[1]; Nejdl, J ^[1]; Luther, Brad ^[1]; Proux, C ^[4]; Le, T. T. ^[2]; Dunn, James ^[5]; Ros, D ^[2]; Zeitoun, Philippe ^[6]; Rocca, Jorge ^[1]

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1. Colorado State University, Fort Collins
2. Laboratoire de Physique des Gaz et des Gaz et des Plasmas
3. ORNL
4. Laboratoire d’Optique Applique´e, ENSTA, CNRS, Ecole Polytechnique
5. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL)
6. École Polytechnique

Seeding soft X-ray plasma ampli ers with high harmonics has been demonstrated to generate high-brightness soft X-ray laser pulses with full spatial and temporal coherence. The interaction between the injected coherent eld and the swept-gain medium has been modelled. However, no exper- iment has been conducted to probe the gain dynamics when perturbed by a strong external seed eld. Here, we report the rst X-ray pump X-ray probe measurement of the nonlinear response of a plasma ampli er perturbed by a strong soft X-ray ultra-short pulse. We injected a sequence of two time-delayed high-harmonic pulses (l518.9 nm) into a collisionally excited nickel-like molybdenum plasma to measure with femto-second resolution the gain depletion induced by the saturated ampli cation of the high-harmonic pump and its subsequent recovery. The measured fast gain recovery in 1.5 1.75 ps con rms the possibility to generate ultra-intense, fully phase-coherent soft X-ray lasers by chirped pulse ampli cation in plasma ampli ers.

• Research Organization: Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE; Work for Others (WFO)
• DOE Contract Number: DE-AC05-00OR22725
• OSTI ID: 1132357
• Journal Information: Nature Photonics, Vol. 8, Issue 5; ISSN 1749--4885
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English