ABSTRACT
Bright, coherent soft X-ray radiation is essential to a variety of applications in fundamental research and life sciences. To date, a high photon flux in this spectral region can only be delivered by synchrotrons, free-electron lasers or high-order harmonic generation sources, which are driven by kHz-class repetition rate lasers with very high peak powers. Here, we establish a novel route toward powerful and easy-to-use SXR sources by presenting a compact experiment in which nonlinear pulse self-compression to the few-cycle regime is combined with phase-matched high-order harmonic generation in a single, helium-filled antiresonant hollow-core fibre. This enables the first 100 kHz-class repetition rate, table-top soft X-ray source that delivers an application-relevant flux of 2.8 × 106 photon s-1 eV-1 around 300 eV. The fibre integration of temporal pulse self-compression (leading to the formation of the necessary strong-field waveforms) and pressure-controlled phase matching will allow compact, high-repetition-rate laser technology, including commercially available systems, to drive simple and cost-effective, coherent high-flux soft X-ray sources.
ABSTRACT
Separation of the high average power driving laser beam from the generated XUV to soft-X-ray radiation poses great challenges in collinear HHG setups due to the losses and the limited power handling capabilities of the typically used separating optics. This paper demonstrates the potential of driving HHG with annular beams, which allow for a straightforward and power scalable separation via a simple pinhole, resulting in a measured driving laser suppression of 5â 10-3. The approach is characterized by an enormous flexibility as it can be applied to a broad range of input parameters and generated photon energies. Phase matching aspects are analyzed in detail and an HHG conversion efficiency that is only 27% lower than using a Gaussian beam under identical conditions is demonstrated, revealing the viability of the annular beam approach for high flux coherent short-wavelength sources and high average power driving lasers.
