Attosecond Pulse Amplification in a Plasma-Based X-Ray Laser Dressed by an Infrared Laser Field

V. A. Antonov, K. Ch. Han, T. R. Akhmedzhanov, Marlan Scully, and Olga Kocharovskaya

Phys. Rev. Lett. 123, 243903 – Published 12 December 2019

Abstract

High-harmonic generation (HHG) of laser radiation has led to attosecond pulse formation which offers unprecedented temporal resolution in observing and controlling electron and nuclear dynamics. But the energy of attosecond pulses remains quite small, especially for photon energies exceeding 100 eV, which limits their practical applications. We propose a method for amplification of attosecond pulses in the active medium of a plasma-based x-ray laser dressed by a replica of the laser field used for HHG. The experimental implementation is suggested in hydrogenlike $C 5 +$ x-ray laser at 3.4 nm wavelength in the “water window” range.

Received 15 April 2019

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.123.243903

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

High-order harmonic generation Light-matter interaction Ultrafast optics

X-ray lasers

X-ray techniques

Atomic, Molecular & Optical

Authors & Affiliations

V. A. Antonov ^1,2,*, K. Ch. Han³, T. R. Akhmedzhanov³, Marlan Scully³, and Olga Kocharovskaya³

¹Institute of Applied Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Nizhny Novgorod 603950, Russia
²Prokhorov General Physics Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow 119991, Russia
³Department of Physics and Astronomy and Institute for Quantum Studies and Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas 77843-4242, USA