Abstract
The free-electron laser, first proposed by Madey1 in 1971, has significantly reduced laser wavelengths to the vacuum ultraviolet2,3 and soft X-ray regions4. Recently, an X-ray free-electron laser (XFEL) was operated at 1.2 Å at the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS)5. Here, we report the successful generation of sub-ångström laser light using a compact XFEL source, combining a short-period undulator with an 8 GeV electron beam. The shortest wavelength attained—0.634 Å (63.4 pm)—is four orders of magnitude smaller than the 694 nm generated by Maiman's first laser6. The maximum power exceeded 10 GW with a pulse duration of 10−14 s. This achievement will contribute to the widespread use of XFEL sources and provide broad opportunities for exploring new fields in science.
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Acknowledgements
The authors thank the staff of SACLA/SPring-8 for their continuous support and M.E. Couprie for fruitful discussions. The authors also thank H. Matsumoto and H. Baba for developing the basic components of the C-band accelerator system.
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All authors contributed to the design and construction of SACLA, and to conducting the experiments. T.I., H.K. and T.S. proposed a concept for the compact XFEL source. N.K. supervised the construction project for SACLA. H.T., T.H., K.T., T.T. and M.Y. summarized the strategy for the beam commissioning, and led experiments and data analyses.
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Ishikawa, T., Aoyagi, H., Asaka, T. et al. A compact X-ray free-electron laser emitting in the sub-ångström region. Nature Photon 6, 540–544 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2012.141
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2012.141
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