Extremely short, intense light flashes are in high demand to investigate atoms, molecules and new materials. Free-electron lasers (FELs) produce these flashes. But around the world, beam time available at large-scale user facilities is in short supply, and waiting times are long.
Researchers at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) and the Synchrotron SOLEIL near Paris have taken a crucial step along this path: For the first time, they managed to operate a laser-plasma FEL stably and reproducibly in the so-called high-gain regime—an operating state with particularly high amplification of the radiation generated.
The work is published in the journal Physical Review Letters.
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