In this contribution, we present a scanning coherent diffractive imaging (i.e. ptychography) microscope operating in the EUV. Coherent EUV radiation at 13.5 nm is generated by high-order harmonic generation using a high-power fiber laser system. Utilizing structured illumination, a highly stable EUV source and ptychography setup sub 20 nm half-pitch resolution is demonstrated on a resolution test chart. Moreover, the lamella of an integrated structure is investigated and its contained materials are identified using the measured quantitative amplitude and phase.
Intense, ultrafast laser sources with an operation wavelength beyond the well-established near-IR are valuable tools for exploiting the wavelength scaling laws of strong-field, light-matter interactions. Such laser systems enable the scaling of the phase matching photon energy cut-off in high-order harmonic generation, which allows for the generation of coherent soft X-ray radiation up to, and even beyond, the water window. Such laser-driven sources enable a plethora of subsequent applications. A number of these applications can significantly benefit from an increase in repetition rate. In that regard, ultrafast thulium-doped fiber laser systems (providing a broad amplification bandwidth in the 2 μm wavelength region) represent a promising, average-power scalable laser concept for driving high-order harmonic generation. These lasers are capable of delivering ~100 fs pulses with multi-GW peak power at hundreds of kHz repetition rate. In this work, we show that combining ultrafast thulium-doped fiber CPA systems with HHG in an antiresonant hollow-core fiber is a promising approach to realize high photon energy cut-off HHG from a compact setup. The realization is based on combining nonlinear pulse self-compression (leading to strong-field waveforms) and phase-matched high-order harmonic generation in a single antiresonant hollow-core fiber. In this demonstration, a photon energy cut-off of approximately 330 eV has been achieved, together with a photon flux >106 ph/s/eV at 300 eV. These results emphasize the great potential of exploiting the HHG wavelength scaling laws with 2 μm fiber laser technology. Improvements of the HHG efficiency, the overall HHG yield and further laser performance enhancements will be the subjects of our future work.
Intense, ultrafast laser sources with an emission wavelength beyond the well-established near-IR are important tools for exploiting the wavelength scaling laws of strong-field, light-matter interactions. In particular, such laser systems enable high photon energy cut-off HHG up to, and even beyond, the water window thus enabling a plethora of subsequent experiments. Ultrafast thulium-doped fiber laser systems (providing a broad amplification bandwidth in the 2 μm wavelength region) represent a promising, average-power scalable laser concept in this regard. These lasers already deliver ~100 fs pulses with multi-GW peak power at hundreds of kHz repetition rate. In this work, we show that combining ultrafast thulium-doped fiber CPA systems with hollow-core fiber based nonlinear pulse compression is a promising approach to realize high photon energy cut-off HHG drivers. Herein, we show that thulium-doped, fiber-laser-driven HHG in argon can access the highly interesting spectral region around 90 eV. Additionally, we show the first water window high-order harmonic generation experiment driven by a high repetition rate, thulium-doped fiber laser system. In this proof of principle demonstration, a photon energy cut-off of approximately 400 eV has been achieved, together with a photon flux <105 ph/s/eV at 300 eV. These results emphasize the great potential of exploiting the HHG wavelength scaling laws with 2 μm fiber laser technology. Improvements of the HHG efficiency, the overall HHG yield and further laser performance enhancements will be the subject of our future work.
Access to the requested content is limited to institutions that have purchased or subscribe to SPIE eBooks.
You are receiving this notice because your organization may not have SPIE eBooks access.*
*Shibboleth/Open Athens users─please
sign in
to access your institution's subscriptions.
To obtain this item, you may purchase the complete book in print or electronic format on
SPIE.org.
INSTITUTIONAL Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.
PERSONAL Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.