Bright high-order harmonic generation around 30 nm using Hundred-Terawatt-level laser system for seeding full coherent XFEL

Abstract

In the past few years, the laser wakefield acceleration (LWFA) electron is a hot topic. One of its applications is to produce soft X-ray free-electron laser (XFEL). During this process, high harmonic generation (HHG) is a potential seed. To decrease the timing jitter between LWFA and HHG, it is better for them to come from the same laser source. We have experimentally investigated bright high-order harmonic generation with a 200-terawatt (TW)/1-Hz Ti: Sapphire laser system. By using the loosely focused method and optimizing the phase-matching conditions, we have obtained bright high-order harmonics around 30 nm. Output energy of the 29th harmonic (27.6 nm) reaches as high as 100 nJ per pulse, and the harmonic beam divergence is estimated to be 0.3 mrad in a full width at half maximum (FWHM). Although the hundred-TW-level laser system has the problems of poor beam quality and shot-to-shot energy fluctuation for HHG, the generated soft X-ray (~30 nm) sources can also have good stability by carefully optimizing the laser system.