Toward compact and ultra-intense laser-based soft x-ray lasers

We report here recent work on an optical field ionized (OFI), high-order harmonic-seeded EUV laser. The amplifying medium is a plasma of nickel-like krypton obtained by OFI when focusing a 1 J, 30 fs, circularly-polarized, infrared pulse into a krypton-filled gas cell or krypton gas jet. The lasing transition is the 3d⁹4d (J = 0) → 3d⁹4p (J = 1) transition of Ni-like krypton ions at 32.8 nm and is pumped by collisions with hot electrons. The gain dynamics was probed by seeding the amplifier with a high-order harmonic pulse at different delays. The gain duration monotonically decreased from 7 ps to an unprecedented shortness of 450 fs full width at half-maximum as the amplification peak rose from 150 to 1200 with an increase of the plasma density from 3 × 10¹⁸ to 1.2 × 10²⁰ cm⁻³. The integrated energy of the EUV laser pulse was also measured, and found to be around 2 μJ. It is to be noted that in the ASE mode, longer amplifiers were achieved (up to 2 cm), yielding EUV outputs up to 14 μJ. (paper)