Coherence properties and applications of a transient collisional excitation type silver soft x-ray laser at Advanced Photon Research Center.

A ∼10J, pico-second laser pumped transient collisional excitation type silver soft x-ray laser at 13.9 nm routinely delivers collimated saturated amplification soft x-ray laser pulses with an energy of 20 µJ at the Advanced Photon Research Center. The soft x-ray laser pulse contains reasonable spatial coherence length of 0.1 mm at the place 1 m away from the x-ray laser source. The pulse width and energy are a few ps and a few tens of µJ, which is sufficient for imaging with pico-second time resolution. We describe the three kinds of subjects including the spatial coherence measurement of the silver x-ray laser using a multi-slit array, the wave front division type soft x-ray interferometer using a Lloyd's mirror and the measurement of domain size distributions in a single BaTiO[SUB3] ferroelectrics crystal ar room temperature. As for the interferometer experiment, we have obtained a 50 µm diameter wire image with fringe shifts. As for the speckle measurement, the spatial correlation and the spatial power spectrum, which are related to the domain size distribution, have been characterized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]