High-brightness injection-seeded soft-x-ray-laser amplifier using a solid target

We demonstrate the generation of an intense soft-x-ray-laser beam by saturated amplification of high harmonic seed pulses in a dense transient collisional soft-x-ray-laser plasma amplifier created by heating a titanium target. Amplification in the 32.6 nm line of Ne-like Ti generates laser pulses of subpicosecond duration that are measured to approach full spatial coherence. The peak spectral brightness is estimated to be similar to 2x10(26) photons/(s mm(2) mrad(2) 0.01% bandwidth). The scheme is scalable to produce extremely bright lasers at very short wavelengths with full temporal and spatial coherence.