SCRAT Laboratory

X-ray streak cameras (XSC) are instruments devoted to probe ultrafast phenomena on the picosecond and femtosecond time scale. In particular, they are detectors capable of resolving the intensity of an x-ray photon signal as a function of time and space. Their development is receiving an important boost from the recent advances in the realization of new brilliant and pulsed lightsources such as high-power amplified lasers and free electron lasers. Over the past two decades many different techniques have been developed in order to improve the temporal resolution of X-ray streak cameras. This development is still ongoing, and temporal resolutions below 1 ps in the EUV-Soft X-ray range are currently achieved. Nonetheless, an improvement of the XSC performances represents an important goal in order to match the unique characteristics of the photon sources now available.
At the SCRAT laboratory (Streak Camera Research And Technology) we are currently carrying on an R&D project in collaboration with Hamamatsu Photonics aiming at the realization of an XSC working in the 3-100 nm wavelength range with an ultimate temporal resolution less than 500 fs. It will be possible to use this instrument for several applications including time-resolved X-ray scattering and spectroscopy experiments, pulse length measurements, delay lines characterization, and so on. It will be possible also to implement the XSC into experiments that will be performed at FERMI@Elettra as a characterizing and/or investigation tool.
The XSC is currently under test and development. The first results have shown a temporal resolution of about 0.7 ps with 800 nm ultrashort laser pulses. Further tests are foreseen for the next future using the higher harmonics of the 1 kHz Ti:Sapphire amplified laser used also to trigger the streak camera itself by means of the photoconductive optical switch. The possibility of using the HHG source that is present in the same lab will be investigated as well.



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Last Updated on Thursday, 29 August 2013 11:27