The search for table-top and repetitive pump schemes during the last decade has been the driving force behind the spectacular advances demonstrated during the 10th International Conference on X-Ray Lasers, organized in 2006 in Berlin. Since 1986, international experts have gathered every two years at this established conference to discuss the progress in theory, experiment and application of plasma-based soft X-ray lasers. Traditionally, the conference sessions devoted to complementary and alternative sources of short wavelength radiation, such as high harmonics, XFEL or incoherent X-rays are organized so as to emphasize the role of X-ray laser research in relation to the other short wavelength sources. Grazing incidence pumping (GRIP) and seeding with high harmonics were the dominant topics of the conference. High repetition rate and portable X-ray lasers were reported to have been applied in metrology and photochemistry for the first time. The proceedings of this series of conferences constitute a comprehensive source of reference of the acknowledged state-of the-art in this specific area of laser and plasma physics.

Audience: Researchers and libraries

Résumé
In summary, we have demonstrated intense x-ray lasing from nickel-like plasmas of Mo, Pd, Ag, and Sn by utilizing a short (8 ps) prepulse irradiating the target at a grazing angle of incidence of 22.5°, i.e., collinear with the 3 J, 8 ps main pulse. Saturated lasing has not been proved yet, but comparison with signal levels achieved in previous work suggests that saturation has well been reached in these experiments. This is supported by the fact that a large range of prepulse energies and time intervals gives rise to intense x-ray lasing, as has been demonstrated in the case of Pd. References 1. Yu.V. Afanas'ev and V.N. Shlyaptsev: 'Formation of a population inversion of transitions in Ne-like ions in steady-state and transient plasmas', Sov. J. Quant. Electron. 19, 1606, 1989. 2. M.P. Kalashnikov et al.: 'Saturated operation of a transient collisional x-ray laser', Phys. Rev. A 57, 4778, 1998; J. Dunn et al.: 'Gain saturation regime for laser-driven tabletop, transient Ni-like ion X-ray lasers', Phys. Rev. Lett. 84, 4834, 2000. 3. V.N. Shlyaptsev et al.: Numerical study of transient and capillary x-ray lasers and their applications, Proc. SPIE, Vol. 5197, 221-228, 2003; R. Keenan et al., Efficient pumping scheme for high-average brightness collisonal x-ray lasers, ibid., 213-220.

Contenu
Overview of Tabletop X-Ray Laser Development at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.- Advances in High Repetition Rate Soft X-Ray Laser: Lasing Down to 10.9 nm and High Brightness Operation of a Seeded Soft X-Ray Amplifier Using a Solid Target.- Feasibility of 3.4 nm Laser Pumped by Ultraintense RBS Laser.- Collisionally Pumped X-Ray Lasers for Shorter Wavelengths.- Temporal Characterization of Attosecond Harmonic Pulses.- Development of Multilayer Optics for EUV, Soft X-Ray and X-Ray Regions in IPOE.- One Year of User Operation of FLASH, the Free-Electron Laser in Hamburg.- Capillary Discharge Soft X-Ray Laser at University of L'Aquila: Laboratory Survey.