Title: Strongly aligned gas-phase molecules at free-electron lasers

Abstract

Here, we demonstrate a novel experimental implementation to strongly align molecules at full repetition rates of free-electron lasers. We utilized the available in-house laser system at the coherent x-ray imaging beamline at the linac coherent light source. Chirped laser pulses, i.e., the direct output from the regenerative amplifier of the Ti:Sa chirped pulse amplification laser system, were used to strongly align 2, 5-diiodothiophene molecules in a molecular beam. The alignment laser pulses had pulse energies of a few mJ and a pulse duration of 94 ps. A degree of alignment of $$\langle {\mathrm{cos}}^{2}{\theta }_{2{\rm{D}}}\rangle =0.85$$ was measured, limited by the intrinsic temperature of the molecular beam rather than by the available laser system. With the general availability of synchronized chirped-pulse-amplified near-infrared laser systems at short-wavelength laser facilities, our approach allows for the universal preparation of molecules tightly fixed in space for experiments with x-ray pulses.

Authors:

Kierspel, Thomas ^[1]; Wiese, Joss ^[2]; Mullins, Terry ^[2]; Robinson, Joseph ^[3]; Aquila, Andy ^[3]; Barty, Anton ^[2]; Bean, Richard ^[4]; Boll, Rebecca ^[2]; Boutet, Sebastien ^[3]; Bucksbaum, Philip ^[5]; Chapman, Henry N. ^[1]; Christensen, Lauge ^[6]; Fry, Alan ^[7]; Hunter, Mark ^[3]; Koglin, Jason E. ^[3]; Liang, Mengning ^[3]; Mariani, Valerio ^[2]; Morgan, Andrew ^[2]; Natan, Adi ^[8]; Petrovic, Vladimir ^[8] more »; Rolles, Daniel ^[9]; Rudenko, Artem ^[10]; Schnorr, Kirsten ^[11]; Stapelfeldt, Henrik ^[6]; Stern, Stephan ^[2]; Thogersen, Jan ^[6]; Yoon, Chun Hong ^[12]; Wang, Fenglin ^[13]; Trippel, Sebastian ^[2]; Kupper, Jochen ^[1] « less

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+ Show Author Affiliations

1. Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY), Hamburg (Germany); Univ. of Hamburg, Hamburg (Germany)
2. Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY), Hamburg (Germany)
3. SLAC National Accelerator Lab., Menlo Park, CA (United States)
4. Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY), Hamburg (Germany); European X-ray Free Electron Laser (XFEL), GmbH, Hamburg (Germany)
5. SLAC National Accelerator Lab., Menlo Park, CA (United States); PULSE Institute, Stanford, CA (United States). SLAC National Accelerator Lab.; Stanford Univ., Stanford, CA (United States)
6. Aarhus Univ., Aarhus (Denmark)
7. SLAC National Accelerator Lab., Menlo Park, CA (United States); PULSE Institute, Stanford, CA (United States). SLAC National Accelerator Lab.
8. PULSE Institute, Stanford, CA (United States). SLAC National Accelerator Lab.
9. Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY), Hamburg (Germany); Kansas State Univ., Manhattan, KS (United States)
10. Kansas State Univ., Manhattan, KS (United States)
11. Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics, Heidelberg (Germany)
12. Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY), Hamburg (Germany); European X-ray Free Electron Laser (XFEL) GmbH, Hamburg (Germany)
13. Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY), Hamburg (Germany); SLAC National Accelerator Lab., Menlo Park, CA (United States)

Publication Date:

Wed Sep 16 00:00:00 EDT 2015

Research Org.:

SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (SLAC), Menlo Park, CA (United States)

Sponsoring Org.:

USDOE Office of Science (SC)

OSTI Identifier:

1263392

Alternate Identifier(s):

OSTI ID: 1238841

Report Number(s):

SLAC-PUB-16644
Journal ID: ISSN 0953-4075; arXiv:1506.03650

Grant/Contract Number:  

AC02-76SF00515

Resource Type:

Accepted Manuscript

Journal Name:

Journal of Physics. B, Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics

Additional Journal Information:

Journal Volume: 48; Journal Issue: 20; Journal ID: ISSN 0953-4075

Publisher:

IOP Publishing

Country of Publication:

United States

Language:

English

Subject:

74 ATOMIC AND MOLECULAR PHYSICS; PHYS; molecular physics; controlled molecules; alignment; free-electron laser; imaging; coherent diffractive imaging; laser control