Free-electron lasers articles within Nature

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• Article
  27 September 2023 | Open Access

  Resonant X-ray excitation of the nuclear clock isomer ⁴⁵Sc

  Resonant X-ray excitation of the  ⁴⁵Sc nuclear isomeric state was achieved by irradiation of a Sc-metal foil with 12.4-keV photon pulses from a state-of-the-art X-ray free-electron laser, allowing a high-precision determination of the transition energy.

  • Yuri Shvyd’ko
  • , Ralf Röhlsberger
  •  & Tomasz Kolodziej

• Article | 16 August 2023

  Microstructure and crystal order during freezing of supercooled water drops

  Optical microscopy and X-ray diffraction are used to study the freezing of water droplets in vacuum, leading to the development of a seven-stage model of freezing and the mapping of ice structures and crystal order.

  • Armin Kalita
  • , Maximillian Mrozek-McCourt
  •  & Claudiu A. Stan

• Article
  17 August 2022 | Open Access

  Observation of Rabi dynamics with a short-wavelength free-electron laser

  Rabi dynamics between the ground state and an excited state in helium atoms are generated using femtosecond extreme-ultraviolet pulses from a seeded free-electron laser, which may allow ultrafast manipulation of coherent processes at short wavelengths.

  • Saikat Nandi
  • , Edvin Olofsson
  •  & Jan Marcus Dahlström

• Article | 25 May 2022

  Free-electron lasing with compact beam-driven plasma wakefield accelerator

  Using a compact, particle-beam-driven plasma-based accelerator to accelerate high-quality electron beams that are completely characterized in the six-dimensional phase space, free-electron lasing  is observed with narrow-band amplified radiation in the infrared range.

  • R. Pompili
  • , D. Alesini
  •  & M. Ferrario

• Article | 21 July 2021

  Free-electron lasing at 27 nanometres based on a laser wakefield accelerator

  Lasing in the extreme-ultraviolet range is demonstrated using a laser wakefield accelerator, as a step towards compact X-ray free-electron lasers.

  • Wentao Wang
  • , Ke Feng
  •  & Zhizhan Xu

• Article | 24 February 2021

  Experimental demonstration of the mechanism of steady-state microbunching

  The mechanism of steady-state electron microbunching is demonstrated, providing a basis that will enable its full implementation in electron storage rings to generate high-repetition, high-power coherent radiation.

  • Xiujie Deng
  • , Alexander Chao
  •  & Lixin Yan

• Article | 10 February 2020

  Attosecond pulse shaping using a seeded free-electron laser

  Generation of intense attosecond waveforms with independently controllable amplitude and phase is performed by using a seeded free-electron laser.

  • Praveen Kumar Maroju
  • , Cesare Grazioli
  •  & Giuseppe Sansone

• Letter | 26 August 2015

  Atomic inner-shell laser at 1.5-ångström wavelength pumped by an X-ray free-electron laser

  A copper target is used to achieve an atomic laser in the hard-X-ray regime with strong amplified spontaneous coherent emission at a wavelength ten times shorter than previous lasers have achieved.

  • Hitoki Yoneda
  • , Yuichi Inubushi
  •  & Makina Yabashi

• Letter | 06 November 2013

  Demonstration of electron acceleration in a laser-driven dielectric microstructure

  Acceleration of relativistic electrons in a dielectric laser accelerator at high electric field gradients is reported, setting the stage for the development of future multi-staged accelerators of this type.

  • E. A. Peralta
  • , K. Soong
  •  & R. L. Byer

• Letter | 19 September 2012

  Pulsed electron paramagnetic resonance spectroscopy powered by a free-electron laser

  A free-electron laser is used to power a pulsed electron paramagnetic resonance spectrometer at 240 GHz, demonstrating a range of experimental possibilities such as the manipulation of spin-1/2 systems with 6-ns pulses and the measurement of ultrashort decoherence times.

  • S. Takahashi
  • , L.-C. Brunel
  •  & M. S. Sherwin

• News & Views | 25 January 2012

  Even harder X-rays

  With the laser just over half a century old, another dream of the pioneers of this light source has been fulfilled. An atomic X-ray laser with unprecedentedly high photon energy has been demonstrated. See Letter p.488

  • Jon Marangos

• Letter | 02 February 2011

  Femtosecond X-ray protein nanocrystallography

  The start-up of the new femtosecond hard X-ray laser facility in Stanford, the Linac Coherent Light Source, has brought high expectations for a new era for biological imaging. The intense, ultrashort X-ray pulses allow diffraction imaging of small structures before radiation damage occurs. This new capability is tested for the problem of structure determination from nanocrystals of macromolecules that cannot be grown in large crystals. Over three million diffraction patterns were collected from a stream of nanocrystals of the membrane protein complex photosystem I, which allowed the assembly of a three-dimensional data set for this protein, and proves the concept of this imaging technique.

  • Henry N. Chapman
  • , Petra Fromme
  •  & John C. H. Spence

• Letter | 02 February 2011

  Single mimivirus particles intercepted and imaged with an X-ray laser

  The start-up of the new femtosecond hard X-ray laser facility in Stanford, the Linac Coherent Light Source, has brought high expectations for a new era for biological imaging. The intense, ultrashort X-ray pulses allow diffraction imaging of small structures before radiation damage occurs. This new capability is tested for the problem of imaging a non-crystalline biological sample. Images of mimivirus are obtained, the largest known virus with a total diameter of about 0.75 micrometres, by injecting a beam of cooled mimivirus particles into the X-ray beam. The measurements indicate no damage during imaging and prove the concept of this imaging technique.

  • M. Marvin Seibert
  • , Tomas Ekeberg
  •  & Janos Hajdu