High energy density science with FELs, intense short pulse tunable X-ray sources

Journal article

Short pulse (< 100 fs) tunable X-ray and VUV laser sources, based on the free electron laser (FEL) concept, will be a watershed for high energy density research in several areas. These new 4 th generation light sources will have extremely high fields and short wavelength (∼.1 nm) with peak spectral brightness -photons/(s/mrad 2/mm 2/0.1% bandwidth- 10 10 greater than 3 rd generation light sources. We briefly discuss several applications: the creation of warm dense matter (WDM), probing of near solid density plasmas, and laser-plasma spectroscopy of ions in plasmas. The study of dense plasmas has been severely hampered by the fact that laser-based probes that can directly access the matter in this regime have been unavailable and these new 4 th generation sources will remove these restrictions. Finally, we present the plans for a user-oriented set of facilities that will incorporate high-energy, intense short-pulse, and x-ray lasers at the first x-ray FEL, the LCLS to be opened at SLAC in 2009.

Authors: Lee, R; Moon, S; Chung, H; Cauble, R; Glenzer, S

• Journal: Proceedings of SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering
• Volume: 6261 I
• Publication date: 2006-01-01
• DOI: 10.1117/12.674424
• ISSN: 0277-786X
• Language: English
• Keywords: Fourth Generation Light Sources; High Energy Density Science; Free-Electron lasers