Spatial coherence measurements of a 13.2 nm transient nickel-like cadmium soft x-ray laser pumped at grazing incidence

LIU, Y.; WANG, Y.; MIGUEL ANTONIO LAROTONDA; LUTHER, B. M.; ROCCA, J. J.; ATWOOD, D. T.

Optics Express

Optical Society of America

Lugar: Washington, DC; Año: 2006 vol. 14 p. 12872 - 12879

1094-4087

The spatial coherence of a 13.2 nm transient collisional Ni-like Cd soft X-ray laser pumped at 23 degrees grazing incidence was measured in a series of Young’s double-slit experiments. We observed pronounced fringe visibility variations associated with microstructures in the beam’sintensity profile. The transverse coherence length was measured to be about 1/20 of the beam diameter and did not significantly improve with longer plasma columns. The equivalent incoherent source size is determined to be 10 μ m and the laser’s peak spectral brightness ~ 3 x 10 23photons/sec/mm 2 /mrad 2 within less than 0.01% spectral bandwidth.