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Chirped-pulse laser amplifier and passive enhancement cavity for generation of extreme ultraviolet light

University of British Columbia

Extreme ultraviolet (EUV) light has many potential applications, including spectroscopy and scattering experiments in physical chemistry and atmospheric science. The dominant method for producing high-flux coherent radiation in this spectral range is synchrotron radiation produced from highly subscribed national-scale facilities such as the Canadian Light Source. An alternative to synchrotron radiation is high harmonic generation (HHG), a nonlinear optical process requiring high optical intensities. This thesis describes the development of an optical amplifier and passive enhancement cavity in order to realize a table-top EUV source. A chirped-pulse ytterbium-doped fiber amplifier system outputs 20 W average power from an initial mode-locked laser outputting pulses at 80 MHz and 160 mW average power. The pulses, of duration ~250 fs after the amplifier, are coupled to a high-finesse cavity which further increases the power by a factor of 500. The peak intensity achieved in the cavity is over 10¹⁴ W/cm² and is an order of magnitude above the intensity required to drive HHG in xenon gas.

Text

2010-08-25

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/27803

Physics

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/