Progress in the development of compact high-repetition-rate soft x-ray lasers: gain saturation at 10.9 nm and first demonstration of an all-diode-pumped soft x-ray laser

We report new advances in the development of high repetition rate table-top soft x-ray lasers. We have extended the gain-saturated operation of these lasers to 10.9 nm demonstrating a 1 Hz repetition rate laser operation in Ni-like tellurium with an average power of 1 microwatt. In a separate development we have demonstrated the first all-diodepumped soft x-ray laser. Lasing was achieved in the 18.9 nm line of Ni-like molybdenum in a plasma heated by a compact all-diode-pumped Yb:YAG laser. The solid state pump laser produces 8.5 ps pulses with up to 1 J energy at 10 Hz repetition rate. This diode-pumped laser has the potential to greatly increase the repetition rate and average power of soft x-ray lasers on a significantly smaller footprint. These compact soft X-ray lasers offer new scientific opportunities in small laboratory environments.

[1]  M. Marconi,et al.  Saturated high-repetition-rate 18.9-nm tabletop laser in nickellike molybdenum. , 2005, Optics letters.

[2]  F Pedaci,et al.  Highly coherent injection-seeded 13.2 nm tabletop soft x-ray laser. , 2008, Optics letters.

[3]  Jorge J. Rocca,et al.  Demonstration of high-repetition-rate tabletop soft-x-ray lasers with saturated output at wavelengths down to 13.9 nm and gain down to 10.9 nm , 2005 .

[4]  Zenghu Chang,et al.  Achieving 280fs resolution with a streak camera by reducing the deflection dispersion , 2005 .

[5]  Valentin Petrov,et al.  Passively mode-locked Yb:KYWlaser pumped by a tapered diode laser. , 2002, Optics express.

[6]  T. Mocek,et al.  A high-intensity highly coherent soft X-ray femtosecond laser seeded by a high harmonic beam , 2004, Nature.

[7]  R Keenan,et al.  High-repetition-rate grazing-incidence pumped x-ray laser operating at 18.9 nm. , 2005, Physical review letters.

[8]  J. Kawanaka,et al.  High-energy, diode-pumped, picosecond Yb:YAG chirped-pulse regenerative amplifier as a pump source for optical parametric chirped-pulse amplification , 2007, 2007 Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO).

[9]  David Neely,et al.  Saturated and short pulse duration X-ray lasers , 2002 .

[10]  C. Menoni,et al.  High-brightness injection-seeded soft-x-ray-laser amplifier using a solid target. , 2006, Physical review letters.

[11]  Y. Wang,et al.  Phase coherent, injection-seeded table-top soft x-ray lasers at wavelengths down to 13.9 nm , 2008, 2008 Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics and 2008 Conference on Quantum Electronics and Laser Science.

[12]  P. Nickles,et al.  High-repetition-rate chirped-pulse-amplification thin-disk laser system with joule-level pulse energy. , 2009, Optics letters.

[13]  Ferenc Krausz,et al.  High-energy, diode-pumped CPA to the Joule-level based on Yb-doped materials , 2009 .

[14]  V. G. Shcherbitsky,et al.  240-fs pulses with 22-W average power from a mode-locked thin-disk Yb:KY(WO(4))(2) laser. , 2002, Optics letters.

[15]  Akira Sasaki,et al.  Direct measurement of the temporal profile of the amplification gain of the transient collisional excitation neonlike manganese x-ray laser medium , 2007 .

[16]  Fuxi Gan,et al.  Dependence of the Yb 3+ emission cross section and lifetime on temperature and concentration in yttrium aluminum garnet , 2003 .

[17]  Roshan L. Aggarwal,et al.  Thermo-optic properties of laser crystals in the 100-300 K temperature range: Y3Al5O12 (YAG), YAlO3 (YALO) and LiYF4 (YLF) , 2005, SPIE LASE.