Traveling-wave scheme for the transient pumping of x-ray laser with a sub-ps TW pulse

• Main Authors: Chanteloup, J.C., Salmon, E., Sauteret, C., Zou, J.P., Migus, A., Zeitoun, P., Klisnick, A., Carillon, A., Fourcade, P., Hubert, S., Jamelot, G., Ros, D., McPhee, A.G., O'Rourke, R.M.N., Keenan, R., Lewis, C.L.S., Nickles, P., Janulewicz, K., Kalashnikov, M., Warwick, J.
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Subjects: Cooling; Electrons; Laser excitation; Optical pulses; Plasma temperature; Plasma waves; Plasma x-ray sources; Pulse amplifiers; Pump lasers; X-ray lasers
• DOI: 10.1109/CLEO.1999.834282

Summary form only given. High efficiency of the Transient Collisional Excitation (TCE) pumping of X-ray lasers has been demonstrated recently. TCE relies on the rapid increase of the electron temperature in a preformed plasma irradiated with a short picosecond pulse. This plasma is created by a subnanosecond pulse and contains a predominant proportion of the lasant ions. The gain duration is limited to a few ps by several effects such as plasma cooling or ionization while the transit time of the amplified emission along a 1 cm long plasma column is 33 ps. This results in the temporal detuning of the optimal plasma conditions as the X-ray laser pulse propagates. A way to overcome this detuning is to use a travelling wave irradiation of the plasma at the velocity of the X-ray laser pulse. We perform this task by laterally pumping the gain medium by focusing an inhomogeneous pulse (IF) along the plasma column.