2019/10/08 by J. Pupeikis, Justinas Pupeikis, Pierre-Alexis Chevreuil +9 · 115 citations
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Amplifier #Chirped pulse amplification #Laser #Laser-Matter Interactions and Applications #Laser-Plasma Interactions and Diagnostics #Optical amplifier #Power (physics) #Pulse (music) #Radiation #Repetition (rhetorical device) #Solid State Laser Technologies #Water window #Wavelength #physics.optics
paper · pdf · open access · doi:10.1364/optica.379846
published in Optica 7(2), 168 (Optica Publishing Group)
arxiv created 2019/10/08 · openalex created_date 2019/10/18 · openalex publication_date 2019/12/24 · arxiv updated 2021/09/02 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06
Coherent soft x-ray (SXR) sources enable fundamental studies in the important water window spectral region. Until now, such sources have been limited to repetition rates of 1 kHz or less, which restricts count rates and signal-to-noise ratio for a variety of experiments. SXR generation at high repetition rate has remained challenging because of the missing high-power infrared laser sources to drive the high-harmonic generation (HHG) process. Here we present an optical parametric chirped pulse amplifier (OPCPA) centered at a wavelength of 2.2 µm and generating 16.5 fs pulses (2.2 oscillation cycles of the carrier wave) with 25 W of average power and a peak power exceeding 14 GW at 100 kHz pulse repetition rate. This corresponds to the highest reported peak power for high-repetition-rate long-wavelength laser systems. The output of this 2.2 µm OPCPA system was used to generate a coherent SXR radiation extending beyond 0.6 keV through HHG in a high-pressure gas cell.