The X-ray free-electron laser has opened a new era for photon science, improving the X-ray brightness by ten orders of magnitude over previously available sources. Similar to an optical laser, the spectral and temporal structure of the radiation pulses can be tailored to the specific needs of many experiments by accurately manipulating the lasing medium, that is, the electron beam. Here we repo...

In order to allow widespread application of soft X-ray lasers there is a strong effort worldwide to use as small as possible pump lasers for plasma production. Short pulse lasers (-c~ 1 ps), particularly in the UV, have attracted much interest, since extremely high intensities (up to 10 ~8 W/cm 2) can be achieved with a relatively high repetition rate. In this article we discuss their merit for...

A tabletop high-brightness line-emitting laser-plasma soft x-ray source utilizing single microscopic droplets as target is shown to produce several orders of magnitude less debris than conventional-target sources. Quantitative measurements of debris deposition rates and x-ray flux at different directions around the droplet plasma are presented. With ethanol droplets and a 10 HZ, 70 m.l/pulse la...

The investigation of the inner core of dense, cool plasmas is due to the high opacity and weak self emission a difficult issue. A powerful diagnostic tool for these plasmas is an X-ray backlighter [1]. For this experimental setup a laser plasma is used as an intense X-ray source to either shadowgraph [2] the plasma or to do absorption spectroscopy [3]. This setup allows a high temporal resoluti...

In this paper the experimentally observed phenomenon [1-3] Z-pinch evolution in the capillary discharge of the ultra-violet and soft x-ray laser is theoretically investigated. Experimental and computer researches [4] are also devoted to the capillary discharge. The cylindrical plasma system is considered as a thin tube a capillary with length L and diameter D with the large voltage, applied to ...

Detector Crystal The Laser Fusion Experiments Groups from the Laboratory for Laser Energetics (LLE) and the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) have jointly developed an instrument capable of simultaneously space-, time-, and spectrally resolving x-ray emission from inertial confinement fusion (ICF) targets. Uses of the instrument include framed imaging of line emission from fuel or shell dop...

Gamma-ray photons with energy >9  MeV were produced when second-harmonic-generated laser light (3 eV) inverse-Compton-scattered from a counterpropagating relativistic (~450  MeV) laser-wakefield-accelerated electron beam. Two laser pulses from the same laser system were used: one to accelerate electrons and one to scatter. Since the two pulses play very different roles in the γ-ray generation p...

Terawatt-scale sub-10-fs laser technology – key to generation of GW-level attosecond pulses in X-ray free electron laser Abstract We propose a technique for the production of attosecond X-ray pulses which is based on the use of X-ray SASE FEL combined with a femtosecond laser system. A few-cycle optical pulse from a Ti:sapphire laser interacts with the electron beam in a two-period undulator re...

Interaction of a high intensity laser with matter may generate an ionizing radiation hazard. Very limited studies have been made, however, on the laser-induced radiation protection issue. This work reviews available literature on the physics and characteristics of laserinduced X-ray hazards. Important aspects include the laser-to-electron energy conversion efficiency, electron angular distribut...

The feasibility of the generation of bright ultrashort gamma-ray pulses is demonstrated in the interaction of a relativistic electron bunch with a counterpropagating tightly focused superstrong laser beam in the radiation-dominated regime. The Compton scattering spectra of gamma radiation are investigated using a semiclassical description for the electron dynamics in the laser field and a quant...