Time-diagnostics for improved dynamics experiments at XUV FELs

Markus Drescher (1) , Ulrike Frühling (1) , Maria Krikunova (1) , Theophilos Maltezopoulos (1) , Marek Wieland (1)

1 Institut für Experimentalphysik [Hamburg]

Significantly structured and fluctuating temporal profiles of pulses from SASE free electron lasers as well as their unstable timing requires time-diagnostics on a single-shot basis. The duration and structure of XUV pulses from the Free Electron Laser in Hamburg (FLASH) are becoming accessible using a variation of the streak camera principle, where photoemitted electrons are energetically streaked in the electric field component of a terahertz electromagnetic wave. The timing with respect to an independently generated laser pulse can be measured in an XUV/laser cross-correlator, based on a non-collinear superposition of both pulses on a solid state surface and detection of XUV-induced modulations of its reflectivity for visible light. Sorting of data according to the measured timing dramatically improves the temporal resolution of an experiment sampling the relaxation of transient electronic states in xenon after linear- as well as non-linear excitation with intense XUV pulses from FLASH.

Mots clés: Physical Sciences

Markus Drescher, Ulrike Frühling, Maria Krikunova, Theophilos Maltezopoulos, Marek Wieland. Time-diagnostics for improved dynamics experiments at XUV FELs. Journal of Physics B: Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics, 2010, 43 (19), pp.194010. ⟨10.1088/0953-4075/43/19/194010⟩. ⟨hal-00569844⟩