1. Strongly aligned gas-phase molecules at free-electron lasers.
- Author
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Thomas Kierspel, Joss Wiese, Terry Mullins, Joseph Robinson, Andy Aquila, Anton Barty, Richard Bean, Rebecca Boll, Sébastien Boutet, Philip Bucksbaum, Henry N Chapman, Lauge Christensen, Alan Fry, Mark Hunter, Jason E Koglin, Mengning Liang, Valerio Mariani, Andrew Morgan, Adi Natan, and Vladimir Petrovic
- Subjects
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FREE electron lasers , *MOLECULAR physics , *CHIRPED pulse amplification , *MOLECULAR beams , *MICROCHANNEL plates - Abstract
We demonstrate a novel experimental implementation to strongly align molecules at full repetition rates of free-electron lasers. We utilized the available in-house laser system at the coherent x-ray imaging beamline at the linac coherent light source. Chirped laser pulses, i.e., the direct output from the regenerative amplifier of the Ti:Sa chirped pulse amplification laser system, were used to strongly align 2, 5-diiodothiophene molecules in a molecular beam. The alignment laser pulses had pulse energies of a few mJ and a pulse duration of 94 ps. A degree of alignment of was measured, limited by the intrinsic temperature of the molecular beam rather than by the available laser system. With the general availability of synchronized chirped-pulse-amplified near-infrared laser systems at short-wavelength laser facilities, our approach allows for the universal preparation of molecules tightly fixed in space for experiments with x-ray pulses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2015
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