Investigation on soft X-ray lasing in optical-field ionized plasma

We investigate experimentally the feasibility of using a femtosecond terawatt laser for pumping of soft X-ray lasers. Two principal pumping mechanisms have been proposed for obtaining population inversion in optical field ionisation (OFI) plasma: collisional excitation and recombination. A series of extreme ultraviolet (XUV) laser schemes based on OFI and subsequent collisional excitation by hot electrons in eight-times ionized noble gases (Ar IX, Kr IX, and Xe IX) was proposed.