Luis E. Zapata

High conversion efficiency, high energy terahertz pulses by optical rectification in cryogenically cooled lithium niobate.

We demonstrate highly efficient terahertz (THz) generation by optical rectification (OR) of near-optimum pump pulses centered at 1.03 μm in cryogenically cooled lithium niobate. Using a close to optimal pulse duration of 680 fs and a pump energy of 1.2 mJ, we report conversion efficiencies above 3.8±0.4%, which is more than an order of magnitude higher than previously reported. The results confirm the advantage of using cryogenic cooling of the lithium niobate crystal that significantly reduces the THz absorption, enabling the scaling of THz pulse energies to the millijoule level via OR.

Multi-mJ, kHz, 2.1 μm optical parametric chirped-pulse amplifier and high-flux soft x-ray high-harmonic generation.

We report on a multi-mJ 2.1 μm optical parametric chirped-pulse amplification (OPCPA) system operating at 1 kHz repetition rate, pumped by a picosecond cryogenic Yb:YAG laser, and the demonstration of soft x-ray high-harmonic generation (HHG) with a flux of ∼2×10(8)  photon/s/1% bandwidth at 160 eV in Ar. The 1 kHz cryogenic Yb:YAG pump laser amplifies pulses up to 56 mJ and delivers compressed 42 mJ, 17 ps pulses to the 2.1 μm OPCPA system. In the three-stage OPCPA chain, we have obtained up to 2.6 mJ of output energies at 2.1 μm and pulses compressed to 40 fs with good beam quality. Finally, we show cut-off extension of HHG driven by this 2.1 μm source in Ar and N2 gas cells to 190 eV with high photon flux. Our 3D propagation simulation confirms the generation of soft x-ray attosecond pulses from the experiment with Ar.

Compact x-ray source based on burst-mode inverse Compton scattering at 100 kHz

A design for a compact x-ray light source (CXLS) with flux and brilliance orders of magnitude beyond existing laboratory scale sources is presented. The source is based on inverse Compton scattering of a high brightness electron bunch on a picosecond laser pulse. The accelerator is a novel high-efficiency standing-wave linac and rf photoinjector powered by a single ultrastable rf transmitter at X-band rf frequency. The high efficiency permits operation at repetition rates up to 1 kHz, which is further boosted to 100 kHz by operating with trains of 100 bunches of 100 pC charge, each separated by 5 ns. The entire accelerator is approximately 1 meter long and produces hard x rays tunable over a wide range of photon energies. The colliding laser is a

Cryogenic Yb:YAG composite-thin-disk for high energy and average power amplifiers

\mathrm{Yb}\ensuremath{\mathbin:}\mathrm{YAG}

AXSIS: Exploring the frontiers in attosecond X-ray science, imaging and spectroscopy

solid-state amplifier producing 1030 nm, 100 mJ pulses at the same 1 kHz repetition rate as the accelerator. The laser pulse is frequency-doubled and stored for many passes in a ringdown cavity to match the linac pulse structure. At a photon energy of 12.4 keV, the predicted x-ray flux is

Power scaling of cryogenic Yb:LiYF(4) lasers.

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Highly efficient terahertz pulse generation by optical rectification in stoichiometric and cryo-cooled congruent lithium niobate

in a 5% bandwidth and the brilliance is

Toward a terahertz-driven electron gun

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High-energy, kHz, picosecond hybrid Yb-doped chirped-pulse amplifier.

in pulses with rms pulse length of 490 fs. The nominal electron beam parameters are 18 MeV kinetic energy, 10 microamp average current, 0.5 microsecond macropulse length, resulting in average electron beam power of 180 W. Optimization of the x-ray output is presented along with design of the accelerator, laser, and x-ray optic components that are specific to the particular characteristics of the Compton scattered x-ray pulses.

Sub-picosecond pulses at 100 W average power from a Yb:YLF chirped-pulse amplification system

A cryogenic composite-thin-disk amplifier with amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) rejection is implemented that overcomes traditional laser system problems in high-energy pulsed laser drivers of high average power. A small signal gain of 8 dB was compared to a 1.5 dB gain for an uncapped thin-disk without ASE mitigation under identical pumping conditions. A strict image relayed 12-pass architecture using an off-axis vacuum telescope and polarization switching extracted 100 mJ at 250 Hz in high beam quality stretched 700 ps pulses of 0.6-nm bandwidth.