Extreme ultraviolet free electron laser seeded with high-order harmonic of Ti:sapphire laser

The 13th harmonic of a Ti:sapphire (Ti:S) laser in the plateau region was injected as a seeding source to a 250-MeV free-electron-laser (FEL) amplifier. When the amplification conditions were fulfilled, strong enhancement of the radiation intensity by a factor of 650 was observed. The random and uncontrollable spikes, which appeared in the spectra of the Self-Amplified Spontaneous Emission (SASE) based FEL radiation without the seeding source, were found to be suppressed drastically to form to a narrow-band, single peak profile at 61.2 nm. The properties of the seeded FEL radiation were well reproduced by numerical simulations. We discuss the future precept of the seeded FEL scheme to the shorter wavelength region. (C) 2010 Optical Society of America