Chirped pulse amplification in an extreme-ultraviolet free-electron laser

David Gauthier (1) , Enrico Allaria (1) , Marcello Coreno (2, 1) , Ivan Cudin (1) , Hugo Dacasa (3) , Miltcho Boyanov Danailov (1) , Alexander Demidovich (1) , Simone Di Mitri (1) , Bruno Diviacco (1) , Eugenio Ferrari (1) , Paola Finetti (1) , Fabio Frassetto (4) , David Garzella (5) , Swen Kunzel (6) , Vincent Leroux (7, 8, 9) , Benoît Mahieu (3) , Nicola Mahne (1) , Michael Meyer (10) , Tommaso Mazza (10) , Paolo Miotti (4) , Giuseppe Penco (1) , Lorenzo Raimondi (1) , Primož Rebernik Ribič (1) , Robert Richter (1) , Eléonore Roussel (1) , Sebastian Schulz (11) , Luca Sturari (1) , Cristian Svetina (1) , Mauro Trovó (1) , Paul Andreas Andreas Walker (7, 8) , Marco Zangrando (1, 12) , Carlo Callegari (1) , Marta Fajardo (6) , Luca Poletto (4) , Philippe Zeitoun (3) , Luca Giannessi (1, 13) , Giovanni de Ninno (1, 14)

1 Elettra Sincrotrone Trieste
2 CNR-ISM - Istituto di Struttura della Materia
3 LOA - Laboratoire d'optique appliquée
4 CNR Inst Photon & Nanotechnol
5 LIDyl - Laboratoire Interactions, Dynamiques et Lasers (ex SPAM)
6 IPFN - Instituto de Plasmas e Fusão Nuclear [Lisboa]
7 Univ Hambourg, Ctr Free Electron Laser Sci
8 Univ Hamburg, dept Phys
9 ELI Beamlines
10 XFEL - European XFEL GmbH
11 MPSD - Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter
12 IOM - CNR Istituto Officina dei Materiali
13 ENEA - Italian National agency for new technologies, Energy and sustainable economic development [Frascati]
14 Laboratory of Quantum Optics

Chirped pulse amplification in optical lasers is a revolutionary technique, which allows the generation of extremely powerful femtosecond pulses in the infrared and visible spectral ranges. Such pulses are nowadays an indispensable tool for a myriad of applications, both in fundamental and applied research. In recent years, a strong need emerged for light sources producing ultra-short and intense laser-like X-ray pulses, to be used for experiments in a variety of disciplines, ranging from physics and chemistry to biology and material sciences. This demand was satisfied by the advent of short-wavelength free-electron lasers. However, for any given free-electron laser setup, a limit presently exists in the generation of ultra-short pulses carrying substantial energy. Here we present the experimental implementation of chirped pulse amplification on a seeded free-electron laser in the extreme-ultraviolet, paving the way to the generation of fully coherent sub-femtosecond gigawatt pulses in the water window (2.3-4.4 nm).

Keywords: FEL; COMPRESSION; RADIATION; COHERENT; PROPOSAL

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

David Gauthier, Enrico Allaria, Marcello Coreno, Ivan Cudin, Hugo Dacasa, et al.. Chirped pulse amplification in an extreme-ultraviolet free-electron laser. Nature Communications, 2016, 7, pp.13688. ⟨10.1038/ncomms13688⟩. ⟨hal-01467597⟩