The dependence of the Fe K α yield on the chirp of the femtosecond exciting laser pulse

Abstract

The hard X-ray yield generated with femtosecond laser pulses is studied for differently chirped irradiating laser pulses. The radiation of a Ti:sapphire CPA laser system (29 fs, 750 μJ, 1 kHz) is focused onto an iron containing solid state target producing incoherent hard X-ray radiation, Bremsstrahlung as well as target-specific Kα and Kβ lines. The hard X-ray yield has been optimized by introducing negative and positive group delay dispersion (GDD) and third order dispersion (TOD) to the femtosecond laser pulse. The Kα yield could be enhanced by a factor of 1.7 and reached 1.9×108 Fe Kα photons/s in 4π with the laser pulse positively chirped, and 1.5×108 Fe Kα photons/s with the pulse negatively chirped. When the pulse energy is lowered to about 400 μJ the yield maximum at negative chirp vanishes and only the maximum at positive chirp remains. We explain this behavior with an increased electron temperature caused by the induced GDD and TOD in the pulse.