Femtosecond soft x-ray lasing in dense collisionaly-pumped plasma

Abstract

We report the first experimental measurement of a strong pulse shortening of a seeded plasma-based soft x-ray laser at high electron densities. As a consequence of the gain gating caused by subsequent collisional ionization, the duration drops from 1.4 ps to an unprecedented value of 520 fs RMS when the electron density increases from 4 to 7.6×1019cm−3. These measurements, performed with an original single-shot method, are in good agreement with results from 3D Maxwell-Bloch simulations.Received 4 April 2022Accepted 8 June 2022DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.4.L032009Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.Published by the American Physical SocietyPhysics Subject Headings (PhySH)Research AreasLaser-plasma interactionsPlasma-beam interactionsRadiation & particle generation in plasmasX-ray generation in plasmasPlasma Physics