Spatiotemporal stability of a femtosecond hard-X-ray undulator source studied by control of coherent optical phonons

We report on the temporal and spatial stability of the first tunable femtosecond undulator hard-x-ray source for ultrafast diffraction and absorption experiments. The 2.5-1 angstrom A output radiation is driven by an initial 50 fs laser pulse employing the laser-electron slicing technique. By using x-ray diffraction to probe laser-induced coherent optical phonons in bulk bismuth, we estimate an x-ray pulse duration of 140 +/- 30 fs FWHM with timing drifts below 30 fs rms measured over 5 days. Optical control of coherent lattice motion is demonstrated.