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  • Open Access

High-Efficiency Plasma-Based Compressor for Ultrafast Soft X-Ray Free-Electron Lasers

Mingchang Wang1,2,*, Li Zeng3,*, Bingbing Zhang3, Qinghao Zhu3, Xiaozhe Shen3, Xiaofan Wang3,†, Qinming Li3,‡, and Weiqing Zhang1,§

  • *These authors contributed equally to this work.
  • †Contact author: wangxf@mail.iasf.ac.cn
  • ‡Contact author: liqinming@mail.iasf.ac.cn
  • §Contact author: weiqingzhang@dicp.ac.cn
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Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 155001 – Published 7 October, 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/d7r7-46ld

Abstract

The generation of intense, femtosecond-scale x-ray pulses is crucial for probing matter under extreme temporal and field conditions. Current chirped-pulse amplification (CPA) techniques in free-electron lasers (FELs), however, face efficiency limitations in the soft x-ray regime due to the inherent constraints of conventional optical compressors. To address this challenge, we propose a high-efficiency plasma-based compressor utilizing highly ionized noble gas plasma. Exploiting strong refractive index dispersion near ionic resonances, this scheme achieves over 70% transmission efficiency around 5.2 nm and is extendable to other highly charged ions for operation across the soft x-ray to vacuum ultraviolet range. Simulations demonstrate that a 25 fs FEL pulse can be compressed to 1.4 fs with peak power boosted to over 100 GW, while maintaining high-energy throughput. This transformative approach bridges the soft x-ray CPA gap and opens a scalable path toward compact, high-brightness attosecond FEL sources.

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Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 155001– Published 7 October, 2025
  • Received 30 May 2025
  • Accepted 16 September 2025
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI.

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