Tunable XUV radiation generated by nonresonant frequency tripling in neon

Nonresonant frequency tripling of ultraviolet (UV) radiation (λ_uv = 216–223 nm, generated by sum frequency mixing of the outputs of a frequency doubled pulsed dye laser and of the Nd-YAG pump laser) generates in neon coherent light in the extreme ultraviolet (XUV). The XUV radiation is tunable in spectral regions of negative dispersion λ_xuv = 72.05- 73.58 nm and λ_xuv = 74.3–74.36 nm at the high energy side of the transitions $\text{2p-3s′}\text{built1}\text{2}\text{, 1]}$ and $\text{2p-3s}\text{built3}\text{2}\text{, 1]}$. At UV input powers of 0.1-0.3 MW the generated XUV power was typically P_xuv = 0.1-0.4 W (1.5–6 x 10⁸ photons/pulse). Since present UV dye laser systems provide at λ_uv pulse powers of almost 1 MW the XUV output could easily be increased by more than one order of magnitude.