LASERIX is a high-power laser facility leading to High-repetition-rate XUV laser pumped by Titanium:Sapphire laser.
The aim of this laser facility is to offer Soft XRLs in the 30-7 nm range and auxiliary IR beam that could also be used to
produce synchronized XUV sources. This experimental configuration highly enhances the scientific opportunities of the
facility, giving thus the opportunity to realize both X-ray laser experiments and more generally pump/probe experiments,
mixing IR and XUV sources. In this contribution, the main results concerning both the development of XUV sources(X-Ray
lasers and HHG sources) and their use for applications are presented.
The dependence of the yield of high-order harmonic generation (HHG) on several important experimental parameters
has been successfully modeled in the last 20 years by taking into account the single atom response and propagation
effects. We extended this description by adding a stimulated emission process and named it x-ray parametric
amplification (XPA). Beyond the super-quadratic increase of the XUV signal, which can be explained only in a limited
pressure range by HHG theory, other observed characteristics like exponential growth, gain narrowing, strong blue-shift,
beam divergence, etc. and their dependence on laser intensity and gas pressure can be explained accurately only by the
new XPA model. We experimentally demonstrated XPA in Argon in the spectral range of 40-50 eV in excellent
agreement with the theory. XPA holds the promise to realize a new class of bright x-ray sources for spectroscopy.
In this paper we report the perspectives of the development of the XUV laser sources and applications using High-power laser facilities. We focus our paper on the present status of the French LASERIX facility and more especially about its role in the development of the XUV laser sources considering the French "Institut de la Lumière Extrême " (ILE) and the potential European project Extreme Light Infrastructure (ELI).
Finally, we present the scientific perspectives of X-ray laser sources developments using these laser facilities.
The demonstration of a 7.36 nm Ni-like Sm soft x-ray laser pumped by 36 J of a Nd:glass chirped pulse amplification laser is presented. Double-pulse single-beam non-normal incidence pumping was applied for the efficient soft x-ray laser generation. Here the applied technique included a new single optic focusing geometry for large beam diameters, a single-pass grating compressor traveling-wave tuning capability and an optimized high energy laser double-pulse. This scheme has the potential for even shorter wavelength soft x-ray laser pumping.
Taking advantage of the non-adiabatic blue-shift of high-order harmonics generated by a fixed frequency Nd:Glass laser
system, we are able to report more than 50 % coverage of the XUV spectral range between 18 nm and 35 nm. The
generated harmonic lines are capable of seeding Ni-like Y, Zr and Mo soft x-ray lasers and others.
The PHELIX laser at the GSI Helmholtz center for heavy-ion research is dedicated to provide high energy, ultra-intense laser pulses for experiments in combination with energetic ion beams. Development of x-ray lasers is targeting a number of applications in this context, including x-ray laser spectroscopy of highly-charged ions, and Thomson scattering diagnostics of heavy-ion driven plasmas. Recent developments centered on the application of a novel double-pulse
pumping scheme under GRIP-like, non-normal incidence geometry for both the pre- and the main pulse for transient pumped Ni-like lasers. This scheme considerably simplifies the set-up, and provides a very stable pumping situation even at low pump energies close to the lasing threshold. The technique was scaled to pulse energies above 100 J for the pumping of shorter wavelength x-ray lasers. In addition, a slightly tunable high-harmonic source using a split-off beam from the Nd:Glass pre-amplifier of PHELIX was developed as a seeding source.
Stable and reliable operation of a nickel-like molybdenum transient collisional soft x-ray laser at 18.9 nm demonstrated and studied with a 10Hz Ti:sapphire laser system proves the suitability of the double-pulse non-normal incidence pumping geometry for table-top high repetition soft x-ray lasers and broadens the attractiveness of x-ray lasers as sources of coherent radiation for various applications. X-ray laser emission with pulse energies well above 1 μJ is obtained for several hours at 10Hz repetition-rate without
re-alignment under optimized double pumping pulse parameters including energy ratio, time delay, pulse duration and line focus width.
In this paper we present the perspectives of the development of the XUV laser sources using High-power laser facilities.
We focus our paper on the present statuts of the LASERIX facility and especially its role in the development of the XUV
laser sources considering the French "Institut de la Lumière Extrême" (ILE) and the potential European project Extreme
Light Infrastructure (ELI).
The LASERIX facility provides coherent and short soft x-ray beams for scientific applications. The beams are generated through high intensity laser interaction with matter using two different schemes, plasma based soft x-ray lasers, and high order laser harmonic generation. We describe in this communication the present status
of the facility. The LASERIX beamtime has been recently opened to external users. We present two typical experiments performed in that context with the facility. The first one is dedicated to the fundamental study of the plasma based soft x-ray laser, whereas the second uses the existing beam to study irradiation induced
dammage in DNA samples. We present also the development performed on the soft x-ray laser source to improve its stability and high repetition rate operation.
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