Soft X-Ray Laser Pointing and Focusing Experiments.

Recent advances in x-ray laser research have significantly increased the possibilities for x-ray laser applications. In this paper, we report the first demonstration of pointing and focusing of a soft-x-ray laser beam. A LLNL selenium soft x-ray laser at 206 and 209angstroms was used in these experiments. Two state of the art 76 mm diameter multilayer mirrors were used to collimate and refocus the laser onto a set of cross hairs which were constructed from 100micron diameter wires. The cross hairs were located 4.6 m from the x-ray laser source. Results show that the laser can be pointed to within 75 microradians and focused to a 235micron diameter spot. It is expected that eventually spot sizes near 100microns and flux levels of 100 J/cm sup 2 at x-ray irradiances up to 10 sup (12) W/cm sup 2 can be provided to a remote application, using a similar beam relaying system.