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Spatio-temporal couplings for controlling group velocity in longitudinally pumped seeded soft X-ray lasers

Nature Photonics volume 17, pages 354–359 (2023)Cite this article

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Abstract

Controlling the group velocity of an ultrashort laser pulse by means of spatio-temporal couplings has been proposed to overcome the inherent limitations in laser–plasma interactions. Here we report how this method improves the performance of a seeded soft X-ray laser (SXRL), which intrinsically suffers from group velocity mismatch between the infrared pump beam, used to generate the plasma amplifier, and the soft X-ray seed beam. The energy extraction was measured to be three times higher when the pump group velocity varied from 0.55c to 1.05c. We also demonstrate that the SXRL pulse duration is governed by the pump beam velocity. By compensating the natural group velocity mismatch, the SXRL pulse duration can be kept constant along its propagation, resulting in energetic pulses (up to 2 μJ) as short as 350 fs. Such achievements constitute an experimental demonstration of the so-called ‘flying focus effect’ in an application by controlling the group velocity of a high-intensity laser pulse propagating in a plasma.

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Fig. 1: Experimental set-up.
Fig. 2: Measurements of the impact of group velocity on SXRL energy.
Fig. 3: Measurements of the impact of group velocity on SXRL pulse duration.
Fig. 4: Three-dimensional simulations of the amplified SXRL pulse.
Fig. 5: Simulations of the impact of group velocity on SXRL pulse duration.

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Data availability

The main datasets supporting the findings of this study are provided within the paper. Additional data are available from the corresponding authors upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

This work is supported by ‘Investissement d’Avenir’ (ANR-10-LABX-0039-PALM (F.T. and S.S.) and ANR-18-EURE-0014 (A.K.)) and has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement no. 654148 Laserlab-Europe. This work is also supported by the Grant Agency of the Czech Republic, project no. 18-27340S (M.Z.). We acknowledge support from COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology) for funding the Action TUMIEE (CA17126) supporting this work. This work is also supported by the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid and the Comunidad Autónoma de Madrid, línea de actuación estímulo a la investigación de jóvenes doctores, project CROM and the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación through a Ramón y Cajal RYC2018-026238-I fellowship (E.O.), and by Plan Estatal de Investigación Científica, Técnica y de Innovación (Spain Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación), grant no. PID2021-124129OB-I00 (E.O.).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratoire d’Optique Appliquée, ENSTA-Paristech, CNRS, Ecole Polytechnique, Institut Polytechnique de Paris, Palaiseau, France

    Adeline Kabacinski, Fabien Tissandier, Julien Gautier, Jean-Philippe Goddet, Igor A. Andriyash, Cédric Thaury, Philippe Zeitoun & Stéphane Sebban

  2. Instituto de Fusión Nuclear ‘Guillermo Velarde’ and Departamento de Ingeniería Energética, E.T.S.I. Industriales, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Madrid, Spain

    Eduardo Oliva

  3. ELI Beamlines Project, Institute of Physics CAS, Praha, Czech Republic

    Michaela Kozlová

  4. Institute of Plasma Physics CAS, Praha, Czech Republic

    Michaela Kozlová

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  1. Adeline Kabacinski
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Contributions

A.K., F.T., J.G., M.K. and S.S. designed and built the experiment and performed the measurements. A.K. analysed the experimental results. E.O. developed the DAGON code. E.O. and A.K. performed the numerical simulations. J.-P.G. operated the upgraded laser system of ‘Salle Jaune’. I.A.A., C.T. and P.Z. supported the project. All the authors contributed to the writing of the paper.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Stéphane Sebban.

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Nature Photonics thanks Samuel Barber and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary discussion: dephasing length and need for plasma dispersion compensation in the case of seeded SXRLs (Figs. 1 and 2 and one reference), and energy measurements and definition of energy extraction (Fig. 3).

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Kabacinski, A., Oliva, E., Tissandier, F. et al. Spatio-temporal couplings for controlling group velocity in longitudinally pumped seeded soft X-ray lasers. Nat. Photon. 17, 354–359 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-023-01165-5

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