SFINX Highlights

The objective of the SFINX JRA is to develop new architectures for ultra-intense, high peak power soft X-ray lasers, progressing towards the keV range. During the first two years of SFINX projects, the collaboration between the European teams led to important progress.

The bidimensional hydrodynamic fluid code, ARWEN, aims at becoming the European and international reference code for the soft X-ray laser community. A fast ionization routine has been successfully implemented in a test hydrodynamic routine leading to time-dependent gain modelling (fig. 1).

ARWEN gives the spatio-temporal evolution of the amplifying plasma state. Recently, we implemented a new Bloch-Maxwell code (DeepOne) for modelling the pulse shape evolution during amplification and found an elegant and easy-toimplement seeding condition for generating 15 μJ, 130 fs, 115 MW pulse free of ASE, pre and post-pulse (fig. 2). Such high power fully coherent beam holds many promises for demanding applications like femtosecond single-exposure imaging or high field physics.

GSI laboratory demonstrated an original mechanism of parametric amplification high harmonic. A small-signal gain of 8,000 has been measured at 40 and 260 eV in Argon and Helium respectively.

Fig. 1: Gain spatio-temporal evolution displayed in false colours.	Fig. 2: Pulse shape variation along the plasma amplifier. In green is displayed the ASE, in red the seed and in blue the coherent wake generated by the seed.