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Terawatt-scale attosecond X-ray pulses from a cascaded superradiant free-electron laser

Nature Photonics (2024)Cite this article

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Abstract

Intense attosecond X-ray pulses are key for ultrafast nonlinear spectroscopy and diffractive imaging. Here we demonstrate the generation of terawatt-scale isolated attosecond pulses with a two-stage cascaded X-ray free-electron laser. These pulses have a median energy in excess of 100 μJ in the soft X-ray region. The temporal profile is characterized with an angular streaking measurement, revealing a maximum peak power of 1.1 TW. Our data show an increase in the average peak power of attosecond X-ray pulses by one order of magnitude over previous reported results and provide strong evidence of soliton-like superradiant behaviour in the X-ray regime.

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Fig. 1: Cascaded amplification experiment.
Fig. 2: Spectral measurements.
Fig. 3: Time-domain measurements.
Fig. 4: Numerical simulations.

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Data availability

A subset of the raw data used to produce Figs. 1–4 is publicly available via figshare at https://figshare.com/projects/Terawatt-scale_Attosecond_X-ray_Pulses_from_a_Cascaded_Superradiant_Free-electron_Laser/193178 (ref. 49). This repository also contains a copy of the analysis script used to reconstruct the attosecond pulses from the streaking data. All other data that support the plots within this paper and other findings of this study are available from the corresponding authors on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

Use of the LCLS, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, is supported by the US Department of Energy (DOE), Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, under contract no. DE-AC02-76SF00515. A.M., D.C., P.F. and Z.G. acknowledge support from the Accelerator and Detector Research Program of the Department of Energy, Basic Energy Sciences (BES) division. Z.G., R.R.R. and P.F. also acknowledge support from the Robert Siemann Fellowship of Stanford University. Effort of T.D., J.W., M.F.K. and J.P.C. is supported by the DOE, BES, Chemical Sciences, Geosciences, and Biosciences Division (CSGB). A.M. would like to acknowledge L. Giannessi and T. Gorkhover for useful discussions and suggestions.

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  1. Applied Physics Department, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    Paris Franz, River R. Robles, Erik Isele, Zhaoheng Guo, Jun Wang, Emily Thierstein & Matthias F. Kling

  2. SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Menlo Park, CA, USA

    Paris Franz, Siqi Li, Taran Driver, River R. Robles, David Cesar, Erik Isele, Zhaoheng Guo, Jun Wang, Joseph P. Duris, Kirk Larsen, James M. Glownia, Xinxin Cheng, Matthias C. Hoffmann, Xiang Li, Ming-Fu Lin, Andrei Kamalov, Razib Obaid, Adam Summers, Nick Sudar, Emily Thierstein, Zhen Zhang, Matthias F. Kling, Zhirong Huang, James P. Cryan & Agostino Marinelli

  3. Stanford PULSE Institute, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Menlo Park, CA, USA

    Paris Franz, Siqi Li, Taran Driver, River R. Robles, Erik Isele, Zhaoheng Guo, Jun Wang, Kirk Larsen, Emily Thierstein, Matthias F. Kling, Zhirong Huang, James P. Cryan & Agostino Marinelli

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Contributions

P.F., S.L., Z.G., T.D., J.P.D., J.P.C. and A.M. conceived the experiment. P.F., R.R.R., D.C., Z.G., J.P.D., N.S., Z.Z. and A.M. set up the attosecond XFEL configuration. P.F., S.L., T.D., Z.G., J.W., E.I., K.L., J.M.G., X.C., M.C.H., X.L., M.-F.L., A.K., R.O., A.S., E.T., M.F.K., J.P.C. and A.M. conducted the angular streaking measurements to determine the pulse durations. P.F., S.L., T.D., R.R.R., E.I., Z.G., J.W., J.P.C. and A.M. performed the data analysis. R.R.R., Z.G., Z.Z. and D.C. conducted the numerical simulations of the FEL. All authors were involved in the writing of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to James P. Cryan or Agostino Marinelli.

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

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Extended data

Extended Data Table 1 Electron beam parameters
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Extended Data Table 2 Laser parameters
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Supplementary Information

Supplementary Sections I–IV, Figs. 1–10, Table 1 and discussion.

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Franz, P., Li, S., Driver, T. et al. Terawatt-scale attosecond X-ray pulses from a cascaded superradiant free-electron laser. Nat. Photon. (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-024-01427-w

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