Caroline Juliano

Doctoral project

High-power few-cycle SWIR OPCPA source for soft X-ray generation in the water window
High Harmonic generation is an attractive table-top source to obtain coherent XUV radiation, starting from an infrared laser. By driving the process with longer wavelengths, the harmonic cut-off can be extended to the soft X-ray (SXR) spectral region and particularly to the water window. However, this comes with the cost to further reduce the HHG conversion efficiency. The central goal of my PhD project is to build a high-power OPCPA laser source in the short wave infrared (SWIR), around 2 µm, to generate SXR efficiently. The setup scales in average power in order to compensate for the low conversion efficiency and therefore obtain a high photon flux of the generated SXR, while keeping a high repetition rate to enable pump-probe experiments with improved statistics and minimize space-charge effects.