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Avalanche Of Emissions Creates First Atomic X-Ray Laser

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Dec 28, 2009
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by Ashley N. Paddock
Avalanche of emissions creates first atomic x-ray laser (Photonics Spectra | Apr 2012 | Tech News)
Quote:
LIVERMORE, Calif. – The shortest, purest x-ray laser pulses ever achieved fulfill a 45-year-old prediction and could open the door to new materials, medicines and devices.

Physicists from Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) created the pulses, which were around 40 fs, by aiming the center’s Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) at a capsule of neon gas, setting off an avalanche of x-ray emissions to create the first “atomic x-ray laser.”

In the artist's illustration above a powerful x-ray laser pulse from SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory’s Linac Coherent Light Source comes up from the lower-left corner (green) and hits a neon atom (center). Illustration courtesy of Gregory M. Stewart/SLAC.
Quote:
The new laser fulfills a 1967 prediction that x-ray lasers could be made by first removing inner electrons from atoms and then inducing electrons to fall from higher to lower energy levels, releasing a single color of light in the process. But until 2009, when LCLS came online, no x-ray source was powerful enough to create this type of laser.
Quote:
To make the laser, LCLS’ powerful x-ray pulses – each a billion times brighter than any available before – knocked electrons out of the inner shells of many of the neon atoms. When other electrons fell in to fill the holes, about one in 50 atoms responded by emitting a photon in the very short hard x-ray wavelength. Those x-rays stimulated neighboring neon atoms to emit more x-rays, creating a domino effect that amplified laser light 200 million times.
Quote:
The research appeared in the Jan. 26 issue of Nature doi: 10.1038/nature10721
 
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