Aberration-free laser beam in the soft x-ray range.
By seeding an optical-field-ionized population-inverted plasma amplifier with the 25th harmonic of an IR laser, we have achieved what we believe to be the first aberration-free laser beam in the soft x-ray spectral range. This laser emits within a cone of 1.34 mrad(1/e(2)) at a repetition rate of 10 Hz at a central wavelength of 32.8 nm. The beam exhibits a circular profile and wavefront distortions as low as lambda/17. A theoretical analysis of these results shows that this high beam quality is due to spatial filtering of the seed beam by the plasma amplifier aperture.
Goddet
J Ph
JP
Laboratoire d'Optique Appliquée (LOA), ENSTA-Ecole Polytechnique, Chemin de la Hunière,91761 Palaiseau, France. jean-philippe.goddet@ensta.fr
Sebban
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Gautier
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Zeitoun
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Valentin
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Tissandier
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Marchenko
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Lambert
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Ribières
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Douillet
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Lefrou
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Iaquaniello
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Burgy
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Maynard
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Cros
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Robillard
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Mocek
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Nejdl
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Kozlova
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Jakubczak
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