Ultrafast lasers and X-ray applications

Summary form only given. The rapid evolution of femtosecond laser technology has led to the generation of multiterawatt optical pulses at multi-Hertz repetition rates with pulse durations as short as 16 fs. The combination of high repetition and high peak power lends itself naturally to the generation of high fluxes of energetic particles and photons. Furthermore, X-rays generated with these pulses can have pulse durations which are several orders of magnitude shorter than the best synchrotron sources currently available. More importantly their time-scale (1 ps to <100 fs) is commensurate with that of many interesting physical phenomena including: the making and breaking of chemical bonds, the expansion of instantaneously heated lattices, optical phonon generation and propagation of laser induced shocks, etc. In this presentation, the development of 10-fs-range laser technology and ultrafast X-ray sources and applications will be presented. With these technologies it has been possible to generate picosecond X-ray movies of laser heated crystalline materials which show for the first time the propagation of coherent acoustic phonons into bulk material with milliangstrom strain resolution and picosecond temporal resolution. Extensions and possible future applications and sources will be outlined.