Note: Measurement of saturable absorption by intense vacuum ultraviolet free electron laser using fluorescent material.

Advances in free electron lasers (FELs) which generate high energy photons are expected to open novel nonlinear optics in the x-ray and vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) regions. In this paper, we report a new method for performing VUV-FEL focusing experiments. A VUV-FEL was focused with Kirkpatrick-Baez optics on a multilayer target, which contains fused silica as a fluorescent material. By measuring the fluorescence, a 5.6x4.9 microm(2) focal spot was observed in situ. Fluorescence was used to measure the saturable absorption of VUV pulses in the tin layer. The transmission increases nonlinearly higher with increasing laser intensity.