Bright, high-repetition-rate water window soft X-ray source enabled by nonlinear pulse self-compression in an antiresonant hollow-core fibre

Abstract: Bright, coherent soft X-ray (SXR) radiation is essential to a variety of applications in fundamental research and life sciences. So far, high photon flux in this spectral region can only be delivered by synchrotrons, free electron lasers or high-order harmonic generation (HHG) sources, which are driven by kHz-class repetition rate lasers with very high peak powers. Here, we establish a novel route toward powerful and easy-to-use SXR sources by presenting a compact experiment, in which nonlinear pulse self-compression to the few-cycle regime is combined with phase-matched HHG in a single, helium-filled antiresonant hollow-core fibre (ARHCF). This enables the first 100 kHz-class repetition rate, table-top SXR source, that delivers an application-relevant flux of 2.8*10^6 Photons/s/eV around 300 eV. The fibre-integration of temporal pulse self-compression (leading to the formation of the necessary strong-field waveforms) and pressure controlled phase-matching will allow compact, high repetition rate laser technology, including commercially available systems, to drive simple and cost-effective, coherent high-flux SXR sources.