Laser-induced damage threshold in n-on-1 regime of Ta2O5 films at 532, 800, and 1064 nm

Ta2O5 films were prepared with conventional electron beam evaporation and annealed in O2 at 673 K for 12 h. Laser-induced damage thresholds (LIDTs) of the films were performed at 532 and 1064 nm in 1-on-1 regime firstly, and then were performed at 532, 800, and 1064 nm in n-on-1 regime, respectively.The results showed that the LIDTs in n-on-1 regime were higher than that in 1-on-1 regime at 532 and 1064 nm. In addition, in n-on-1 regime, the LIDT increased with the increase of wavelength. Furthermore, both the optical property and LIDT of Ta2O5 films were influenced by annealing in O2.     

A long-pulse millimeter-wave free electron maser

An experimental free electron maser (FEM) facility is described which operates in the millimeter-wave regime. The experiment demonstrates that high gain and beam extraction efficiency can be obtained with low-current but high-quality electron beams. In the oscillator configuration, microwave powers of 110 kW were achieved with a 300-kV, 4-A beam, corresponding to a beam extraction efficiency of 9.2%. At low beam currents, with the system operating in the linear regime, the FEM gain curve was measured. The experiment uses a Pierce-type gun with a calculated beam emittance of 10.7-mm mrad at 300 kV and 4 A. The wiggler is of the iron permanent magnet hybrid design. The experiment is intended as a first step towards the development of continuous-wave (CW) devices that use beam energy recovery to make use of low-current, high-voltage power supplies     

The first target experiments on the National Ignition Facility

A first set of shock timing, laser-plasma interaction, hohlraum energetics and hydrodynamic experiments have been performed using the first 4 beams of the National Ignition Facility (NIF), in support of indirect drive Inertial Confinement Fusion (ICF) and High Energy Density Physics (HEDP). In parallel, a robust set of optical and X-ray spectrometers, interferometer, calorimeters and imagers have been activated. The experiments have been undertaken with laser powers and energies of up to 8 TW and 17 kJ in flattop and shaped 1–9 ns pulses focused with various beam smoothing options. The experiments have demonstrated excellent agreement between measured and predicted laser-target coupling in foils and hohlraums, even when extended to a longer pulse regime unattainable at previous laser facilities, validated the predicted effects of beam smoothing on intense laser beam propagation in long scale-length plasmas and begun to test 3D codes by extending the study of laser driven hydrodynamic jets to 3D geometries.     

A transport model and numerical simulation of the high-frequency dynamics of three-dimensional beam trusses

The theory of microlocal analysis shows that the energy density associated with the high-frequency vibrations of a three-dimensional Timoshenko beam satisfies a Liouville-type transport equation. In the present application, the material of the beam is assumed to be isotropic. Its parameters are allowed to vary along the beam axis at length scales much larger than the wavelength of the high-frequency waves traveling in it. Moreover, the curvature and torsion of the beam are accounted for. The first part of the paper focuses on the derivation of the transport model for a single three-dimensional beam. In order to extend this model to beam trusses, the reflection/transmission phenomena of the energy fluxes at junctions of beams are described by power flow reflection/transmission operators in a subsequent part. For numerical simulations, a discontinuous Galerkin finite element method is used on account of the discontinuities of the energy density field at the junctions. Thus, a complete mechanical-numerical modeling of the linear transient dynamics of beam trusses is proposed. It is illustrated by numerical examples highlighting some remarkable features of high-frequency vibrations: The onset of a diffusive regime characterized by energy equipartition rules at late times. Energy diffusion is prompted by the multiple reflection/transmission of waves at the junctions, with possible mode (polarization) conversions. This is the regime applicable to the statistical energy analysis of structural acoustics systems. The main purpose of this research is to develop an effective strategy to simulate and predict the transient response of beam trusses impacted by acoustic or mechanical shocks.     

Cyclotron autoresonance maser with high Doppler frequency up-conversion

An LIA-unit with explosive emission injector was used as a basis for CARM with high Doppler frequency up-conversion when the wave frequency is 7 to 9 times the cyclotron frequency of electrons. Using a high-selectivity Bragg resonator as an electrodynamic system of CARM we investigated two regimes having essentially different properties: the dispersion characteristics of the electron beam and the wave either intersected or were tangential to one another. In the first case, the radiation power amounted to 50 MW at the wavelength of 4.4 mm with efficiency 8%. The efficiency significantly smaller than the design value was evidently caused by a high level of parasitic superluminiscence of the beam. In the second regime of operation at 6 mm, the radiation power was 30 MW with a low level of parasitic superluminiscence and efficiency 10% which was close to the calculated value.     

Direct measurement of the double emittance minimum in the beam dynamics of the sparc high-brightness photoinjector

In this Letter we report the first experimental observation of the double emittance minimum effect in the beam dynamics of high-brightness electron beam generation by photoinjectors; this effect, as predicted by the theory, is crucial in achieving minimum emittance in photoinjectors aiming at producing electron beams for short wavelength single-pass free electron lasers. The experiment described in this Letter was performed at the SPARC photoinjector site, during the first stage of commissioning of the SPARC project. The experiment was made possible by a newly conceived device, called an emittance meter, which allows a detailed and unprecedented study of the emittance compensation process as the beam propagates along the beam pipe.     

Investigation of a highly saturated soft X-ray amplification in a capillary discharge plasma waveguide

The characterization of the laser beam intensity distribution of a highly saturated 46.9-nm soft X-ray laser excited by capillary discharges is reported. The laser produces a total output energy of 300 J/pulse by amplification in plasma channels having lengths up to 0.45 m. A regime of laser amplification, which is almost free from the effect of the refraction defocusing, is experimentally determined. This regime produces a soft X-ray laser beam with an intense sub-milliradiant component. In the longer active medium the laser intensity distribution reaches the divergence of 0.6 mrad, which approaches the limit of diffraction. A comparison of the experimental results with the simulations performed with a ray-tracing code shows that the small divergence of the beam could be attributed to the effect of a weak index waveguiding of the laser beam through the long plasma channels. PACS 42.55.Vc; 42.60.Jf     

Physical interpretation of the paraxial estimator

The paraxial estimator (PE) is a parameter quantifying the paraxiality of a light beam. Even if some of its features were previously tackled, key details on its behavior were not fully presented. This paper robustly presents the physical meaning of the PE in a global way, enlarging its interpretation out of the paraxial region what permits to get a first view of the beam propagation dynamics from the value of this parameter. The physical interpretation is given in the spatial domain and in the spectral domain as well. In the first one, the value of PE is related to the competition between the fast oscillations and the remaining oscillations of a propagating field. Looking at spectral domain, the PE deals with the spectral dispersion (or width) of the plane waves forming the field. In this context, a negative value of PE concerns the effective contribution of the evanescent waves what only happens in a strong nonparaxial regime. The PE also accounts the geometric and physical features on the concept of the paraxial approximation in a natural way. An analysis performed for beams propagating through a spherical thin lens reveals that the loss of paraxiality is due to the geometric effect of ray bending by the lens and by another physical effect, concerning the nonideal collimation of the beam.     

Possible application of X-ray optical elements for reducing the spectral bandwidth of an X-ray SASE FEL

A new design for a single pass X-ray Self-Amplified Spontaneous Emission (SASE) FEL is proposed. The scheme consists of two undulators and an X-ray monochromator located between them. The first stage of the FEL amplifier operates in the SASE linear regime. After the exit of the first undulator the electron bunch is guided through a non-isochronous bypass and the X-ray beam enters the monochromator. The main function of the bypass is to suppress the modulation of the electron beam induced in the first undulator. This is possible because of the finite value of the natural energy spread in the beam. At the entrance to the second undulator the radiation power from the monochromator dominates significantly over the shot noise and the residual electron bunching. As a result the second stage of the FEL amplifier operates in the steady-state regime when the input signal bandwidth is small with respect to that of the FEL amplifier. Integral losses of the radiation power in the monochromator are relatively small because grazing incidence optics can be used. The proposed scheme is illustrated for the example of the 6 nm option SASE FEL at the TESLA Test Facility under construction at DESY. As shown in this paper the spectral bandwidth of such a two-stage SASE FEL (Δλ/λ 5 × 10⁻⁵) is close to the limit defined by the finite duration of the radiation pulse. The average brilliance is equal to 7 × 10²⁴ photons/(s × mrad² × mm² × 0.1% bandw.) which is by two orders of magnitude higher than the value which could be reached by the conventional SASE FEL. The monochromatization of the radiation is performed at a low level of radiation power (about 500 times less than the saturation level) which allows one to use conventional X-ray optical elements (grazing incidence grating and mirrors) for the monochromator design.     

High-energy picosecond single-pass multi-stage optical parametric generator and amplifier

We demonstrate a new management of multi-stage optical parametric generator(OPG)and amplifier(OPA)to obtain high-energy picosecond sources with high beam quality.The setup of multi-stage OPG-OPA requires mode-matching between the pump beam and the stable mode of the OPG-OPA.In a proof-of-principle experiment,the single-pass multi-stage OPG-OPA consists of three walk-off compensated KTP crystal pairs and two lenses,pumped by an 86 ps,1064 nm 10 kHz picosecond laser.The signal light at~1.77μm has an average output power of 502 mW with record energy up to 50.2μJ.The beam quality factor of the signal light can be improved toM²_x ×M²_yafter filtering out about 40%signal power.To the best of our knowledge,it is the first picosecond single-pass multi-stage OPG-OPA pumped at kHz regime.     

The backward phase flow and FBI-transform-based Eulerian Gaussian beams for the Schrödinger equation

We propose the backward phase flow method to implement the Fourier–Bros–Iagolnitzer (FBI)-transform-based Eulerian Gaussian beam method for solving the Schrödinger equation in the semi-classical regime. The idea of Eulerian Gaussian beams has been first proposed in [12]. In this paper we aim at two crucial computational issues of the Eulerian Gaussian beam method: how to carry out long-time beam propagation and how to compute beam ingredients rapidly in phase space. By virtue of the FBI transform, we address the first issue by introducing the reinitialization strategy into the Eulerian Gaussian beam framework. Essentially we reinitialize beam propagation by applying the FBI transform to wavefields at intermediate time steps when the beams become too wide. To address the second issue, inspired by the original phase flow method, we propose the backward phase flow method which allows us to compute beam ingredients rapidly. Numerical examples demonstrate the efficiency and accuracy of the proposed algorithms.     

Dispersive solid-state dye laser oscillators

Narrow-linewidth multiple-prism grating solid-state dye laser oscillators are analysed using ray transfer matrices. Attention is given to beam divergence measurements and the effect on them of thermal lensing, at the solid-state gain medium. It is found that although thermal lensing leads to an increment of beam divergence, it induces oscillation in the unstable resonator regime, thus contributing to the attainment of TEM00 beam profiles. In addition, narrow-linewidth emission in dispersive oscillators, incorporating rhodamine 6 G doped HEMA:MMA gain media, is reported for the first time. Laser efficiency is 4–5% at a laser linewidth ≤1.8 GHz for double-longitudinal-mode emission. Beam divergence is measured in the 2–2.3 mrad range, in good agreement with theory. This revised version was published online in November 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Formation of plasma dust structures at atmospheric pressure

The formation of strongly coupled stable dust structures in the plasma produced by an electron beam at atmospheric pressure was detected experimentally. Analytical expressions were derived for the ionization rate of a gas by an electron beam in an axially symmetric geometry by comparing experimental data with Monte Carlo calculations. Self-consistent one-dimensional simulations of the beam plasma were performed in the diffusion drift approximation of charged plasma particle transport with electron diffusion to determine the dust particle levitation conditions. Since almost all of the applied voltage drops on the cathode layer in the Thomson glow regime of a non-self-sustained gas discharge, a distribution of the electric field that grows toward the cathode is produced in it; this field together with the gravity produces a potential well in which the dust particles levitate to form a stable disk-shaped structure. The nonideality parameters of the dust component in the formation region of a highly ordered quasi-crystalline structure calculated using computational data for the dust particle charging problem were found to be higher than the critical value after exceeding which an ensemble of particles with a Yukawa interaction should pass to the crystalline state.     

Variation of soft X-ray emission with gas pressure in a plasmafocus

The variation of the soft X-ray emission in a low energy (3 kJ, 15 kV) plasma focus over a range of pressures is investigated. The working gases are argon and an argon-hydrogen mixture. The X rays are detected using an assembly of PIN-Si diodes with differential filtering and with a multipinhole camera, soft X rays originating from the plasma and from electron beam activity on the copper anode are observed. In general, three pressure regimes can be discerned. In the first regime, both the plasma X rays and the copper line radiation are weak. In the second regime, the X-ray emission is intense and the contribution from copper lines is strong. In the third pressure regime, the plasma X rays are intense while contribution from the copper X-rays are weak     

Ultrarelativistic-positron-beam transport through meter-scale plasmas

We report on the first study of the dynamic transverse forces imparted to an ultrarelativistic positron beam by a long plasma in the underdense regime. Focusing of the 28.5 GeV beam is observed from time-resolved beam profiles after the 1.4 m plasma. The strength of the imparted force varies along the approximately 12 ps full length of the bunch as well as with plasma density. Computer simulations substantiate the longitudinal aberration seen in the data and reveal mechanisms for emittance degradation.     

Spectral analysis of high-order harmonics generated by 30-fs and sub-10-fs laser pulses

The spectral properties of harmonic radiation generated in neon by laser pulses with duration from 30 fs down to 5 fs have been investigated. In the 30-fs temporal regime we have achieved continuously tunable sub-20-nm radiation by changing the gas jet position relative to the laser beam waist. We show that the results of a one-dimensional propagation code partially including three-dimensional focusing effects are in good agreement with the experimental results. Finally, we have performed a spectral characterization of harmonic radiation in the sub-10-fs temporal regime.     

Femtosecond pulsed laser ablation of thin gold film

Laser micromachining on 1000 nm-thick gold film using femtosecond laser has been studied. The laser pulses that are used for this study are 400 nm in central wavelength, 150 fs in pulse duration, and the repetition rate is 1 kHz. Plano-concave lens with a focal length of 19 mm focuses the laser beam into a spot of 3 μm (1/e² diameter). The sample was translated at a linear speed of 400 μm/s during machining. Grooves were cut on gold thin film with laser pulses of various energies. The ablation depths were measured and plotted. There are two ablation regimes. In the first regime, the cutting is very shallow and the edges are free of molten material. While in the second regime, molten material appears and the cutting edges are contaminated. The results suggest that clean and precise microstructuring can be achieved with femtosecond pulsed laser by controlling the pulse energy in the first ablation regime.     

Monte Carlo study of phase transitions in the bond-diluted 3D 4-state Potts model

Large-scale Monte Carlo simulations of the bond-diluted three-dimensional 4-state Potts model are performed. The phase diagram and the physical properties at the phase transitions are studied using finite-size scaling techniques. Evidences are given for the existence of a tricritical point dividing the phase diagram into a regime where the transitions remain of first order and a second regime where the transitions are softened to continuous ones by the influence of disorder. In the former regime, the nature of the transition is essentially clarified through an analysis of the energy probability distribution. In the latter regime critical exponents are estimated. Rare and typical events are identified and their role is qualitatively discussed in both regimes.     

Electron mirror as a corrector of electron microscope objective aberrations

We describe a new optoelectronic system for correcting aberrations of the objective lens with the help of an electron mirror. The system is based on the implementation of a special focusing regime (so-called regime of superimposed images) in which two images of the object are formed in the plane passing through the center of the curvature of the mirror. One of these images is formed by the beams (with aberrations) emerging from the objective lens, and the other is formed by the beams (with cancelled aberrations) reflected from the mirror. The separation of the two superimposed images and visualization of the image with cancelled aberrations are performed by deflection of the electron beam in the axisymmetric magnetic field whose symmetry axis passes through the center of curvature of the electron mirror. The magnetic field distribution ensuring aberration-free deflection of the electron beam is calculated.     

Self-bending of photorefractive solitons

Self-bending of photorefractive solitons is caused by diffusion in photorefractive crystals and becomes an important effect when the beam size is in the range of the charge carriers diffusion length. In this paper we present an experimental and numerical examination of the beam bending dependence on relevant parameters such as the applied electric field and the beam intensity. We demonstrate that the bending dependence on the electric field in the low saturation regime has the form of a square function at low values of the field and becomes linear for higher values. For stronger saturation the curve gets the form of a square root function. The bending dependence on the beam intensity has a maximum at defined intensity. The experimental data are compared with numerical simulations, giving a good qualitative agreement.