Improved beam characteristics of solid-target soft x-ray laser amplifiers by injection seeding with high harmonic pulses.
Injection seeding of solid-target soft x-ray laser amplifiers with high harmonic pulses is shown to dramatically improve the far-field laser beam profile and reduce the beam divergence. Measurements and two-dimensional simulations for a 13.9 nm nickel-like Ag amplifier show that the amplified beam divergence depends strongly on the seed and can therefore be controlled by selecting the divergence of the seed. The near-field beam size of both the seeded and unseeded lasers is shown to be determined by the size of the gain region and the divergence of the amplified beams.
Berrill
Mark
M
National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center for Extreme Ultraviolet Science and Technology, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado 80523, USA. berrill@engr.colostate.edu
Alessi
David
D
Wang
Yong
Y
Domingue
Scott R
SR
Martz
Dale H
DH
Luther
Brad M
BM
Liu
Yanwei
Y
Rocca
Jorge J
JJ