Abstract
We present the first measurement of the gain dynamics in an injection-seeded soft x-ray plasma amplifier (Wang et al. Nat. Photon. 8, 381, (2014)). A sequence of two time-delayed spatially-overlapping high harmonic pulses was injected into a λ = 18.9 nm Ni-like Mo plasma amplifier to measure the regeneration of the population inversion that follows the gain depletion caused by the amplification of the first seed pulse. Collisional excitation is measured to re-establish in about ~ 1.75 ps the population inversion depleted during the amplification of the seed pulse. The measured gain-recovery time is compared to model simulations to gain insight on the population inversion mechanisms that create the transient gain in these amplifiers. The result supports the concept of a soft x-ray laser amplification scheme to generate ultra-intense fully phase-coherent ultrashort soft x-ray laser pulses based on the continuous extraction of energy from a plasma- based amplifier by a stretched seed pulse.
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Acknowledgements
Work supported by the AMOS programme of the Office of Basic Energy Sciences, US Department of Energy, using equipment developed at the NSF ERC for Extreme Ultraviolet Science and Technology and NSF award MRI-ARRA 09-561, and by the LASERLAB3-INREX European project and SHYLAX plus CIBOR RTRA ‘Triangle de la Physique’ programmes.
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Wang, S. et al. (2016). Gain Dynamics in Injection-Seeded Soft X-Ray Laser Plasma Amplifiers. In: Rocca, J., Menoni, C., Marconi, M. (eds) X-Ray Lasers 2014. Springer Proceedings in Physics, vol 169. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-19521-6_46
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-19521-6_46
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