© 2016 [Optical Society of America]. One print or electronic copy may be made for personal use only. Systematic reproduction and distribution, duplication of any material in this paper for a fee or for commercial purposes, or modifications of the content of this paper are prohibited.Optical amplifiers in all ranges of the electromagnetic spectrum exhibit an essential characteristic, namely the input signal during the propagation in the amplifier medium is multiplied by the avalanche effect of the stimulated emission to produce exponential growth. We perform a theoretical study motivated and supported by experimental data on a He gas amplifier driven by intense 30-fs-long laser pulses and seeded with attosecond pulse trains generated in a separated Ne gas jet. We demonstrate that the strong-field theory in the frame of high harmonic generation fully supports the appearance of the avalanche effect in the amplification of extreme ultraviolet attosecond pulse trains. We theoretically separate and identify different physical processes taking part in the interaction and we demonstrate that X-ray parametric amplification dominates over others. In particular, we identify strong-field mediated intrapulse X-ray parametric processes as decisive for amplification at the single-atom level. We confirm that the amplification takes place at photon energies where the amplifier is seeded and when the seed pulses are perfectly synchronized with the driving strong field in the amplifier. Furthermore, propagation effects, phase matching and seed synchronization can be exploited to tune the amplified spectral range within the seed bandwidth.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft
We report the first experimental demonstration of the parametric amplification of attosecond pulse trains at around 11 nm. The helium amplifier is driven by intense laser pulses and seeded by high-order harmonics pulses generated in a neon gas jet. Our measurements suggest that amplification takes place only if the seed pulse-trains are perfectly synchronized in time with the driving laser field in the amplifier. Varying the delay, we estimate the durations of the individual extreme ultraviolet pulses within the train to be on the order of 0.2 fs. Our results demonstrate that strong-field parametric amplification can be a suitable tool to amplify weak attosecond pulses from non-destructive pump-probe experiments and it is an important step towards designing amplifiers for realization of energetic XUV pulses with sub-femtosecond duration using compact lasers fitting in university laboratories.
Out-of-band (OOB) radiation (at wavelengths longer than 130nm) from an extreme ultraviolet (EUV) light source reduces the precision of lithography. The energy of the OOB radiation from laser-produced Sn plasmas were measured by using an absolutely calibrated transmission grating spectrometer equipped with a charge-coupled device. The dependence of the OOB radiant energy on the mass and size of the tin fuel was clarified. The dominant source of the OOB radiation is peripheral heating around the laser spot via electron thermal conduction and radiation from the high-temperature EUV emission region.
A dc microhollow cathode discharge (MHCD) plasma was generated inflowing helium gas containing water vapor. The cathode hole diameters were 0.3, 0.7, 1.0, and 2.0 mm, each with a length of 2.0 mm. Emission spectroscopy was carried out to investigate the discharge mode and to determine the plasma parameters. For the 0.3-mm cathode, stable MHCDs in an abnormal glow mode existed at pressures up to 100 kPa, whereas for larger diameters, a plasma was not generated at atmospheric pressure. An analysis of the lineshapes relevant to He at 667.8 nm and to Ha at 656.3 nm implied an electron density and gas temperature of 2 Â 10 14 cm À3 and 1100 K, respectively, for a 100-kPa discharge in the negative glow region. The dependence of the OH band, and Ha intensities on the discharge current exhibited different behaviors. Specifically, the OH spectrum had a maximum intensity at a certain current, while the H atom intensity kept increasing with the discharge current. This observation implies that a high concentration of OH radicals results in quenching, leading to the production of H atoms via the reaction OH þ e À ! O þ H þ e À. V
An experimental study was made of a target consisting of the minimum mass of pure tin ͑Sn͒ necessary for the highest conversion to extreme ultraviolet ͑EUV͒ light while minimizing the generation of plasma debris. The minimum-mass target comprised a thin Sn layer coated on a plastic shell and was irradiated with a Nd: YAG laser pulse. The expansion behavior of neutral atoms and singly charged ions emanating from the Sn plasma were investigated by spatially resolved visible spectroscopy. A remarkable reduction of debris emission in the backward direction with respect to the incident laser beam was demonstrated with a decrease in the thickness of the Sn layer. The optimal thickness of the Sn layer for a laser pulse of 9 ns at 7 ϫ 10 10 W/cm 2 was found to be 40 nm, at which low-debris emission in the backward direction and a high conversion to 13.5 nm EUV radiation were simultaneously attained.
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