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The field of attosecond physics has expanded significantly in recent years, yet experimental facilities supporting attosecond pump–attosecond probe spectroscopy remain rare. Here, we present a newly constructed beamline for the generation and application of energetic, isolated extreme ultraviolet (XUV) and soft x-ray attosecond pulses via upscaling of high-harmonic generation (HHG) in a gas medium. The fundamental properties of the HHG radiation—energy, beam profile, spectrum, and divergence—are characterized and optimized. The source delivers up to 55 nJ of pulse energy within the Zr window (65–150 eV) with high stability (∼5%–10%) and a divergence of 0.1 mrad. Numerical simulations identify optimal operating conditions consistent with experimental results. Temporal super-resolution of the driving laser is applied, resulting in a broadened spectral continuum. Furthermore, the beamline includes a split-and-delay stage before focusing the HHG radiation to a < 6 μm spot for pump–probe experiments using two distinct focusing optics. Spatially resolved ion microscopy is employed to trace the generated ions at the focus. The presented beamline is designed for nonlinear XUV studies with isolated attosecond pulses.

For many applications of extreme ultraviolet (XUV) and X-ray pulses, a small focus size is crucial to reach the required intensity or spatial resolution. In this article, we present a simple way to characterize an XUV focus with a resolution of 1.85 µm. Furthermore, this technique was applied for the measurement and optimization of the focus of an ellipsoidal mirror for photon energies ranging from 18 to 150 eV generated by high-order harmonics. We envisage a broad range of applications of this approach with sub-micrometer resolution from high-harmonic sources via synchrotrons to free-electron lasers.

Temporal filtering and spectral broadening are simultaneously achieved, allowing the compression of 20 fs laser pulses down to sub-4 fs duration through the method of nonlinear elliptical polarization rotation in an argon filled hollow-core fiber. The sub-4 fs source provides ~ 35-µJ energy with an internal efficiency >50%, which is more than from the most commonly used pulse-cleaning methods. Further, the contrast is improved by 3 orders of magnitude when measured after amplifying the pulses to 16 TW using non-collinear optical parametric chirped pulse amplification with a prospect to even further enhancement.

Time-resolved optical emission spectroscopic measurements of a plasma generated by irradiating a Cr target using 60 picosecond (ps) and 300 ps laser pulses are carried out to investigate the variation in the line width (δλ) of emission from neutrals and ions for increasing ambient pressures. Measurements ranging from 10⁻⁶Torr to 10² Torr show a distinctly different variation in the δλ of neutrals (Cr I) compared to that of singly ionized Cr (Cr II), for both irradiations. δλ increases monotonously with pressure for Cr II, but an oscillation is evident at intermediate pressures for Cr I. This oscillation does not depend on the laser pulse widths used. In spite of the differences in the plasma formation mechanisms, it is experimentally found that there is an optimum intermediate background pressure for which δλ of neutrals drops to a minimum. Importantly, these results underline the fact that for intermediate pressures, the usual practice of calculating the plasma number density from the δλ of neutrals needs to be judiciously done, to avoid reaching inaccurate conclusions.

The field of attosecond physics has expanded significantly in recent years, yet experimental facilities supporting attosecond pump attosecond probe spectroscopy remain rare. Here, we present a newly constructed beamline for the generation and application of energetic, isolated extreme ultraviolet (XUV) and soft X-ray attosecond pulses via upscaling of high-harmonic generation (HHG) in a gas medium. The fundamental properties of the HHG radiation energy, beam profile, spectrum, and divergence are characterized and optimized. The source delivers up to 55 nJ of pulse energy within the Zr window (65-150 eV) with high stability (~5-10) and a divergence of 0.1 mrad. Numerical simulations identify optimal operating conditions consistent with experimental results. Temporal super-resolution of the driving laser is applied, resulting in a broadened spectral continuum. Furthermore, the beamline includes a split-and-delay stage before focusing the HHG radiation to a <6 um spot for pump-probe experiments using two distinct focusing optics. Spatially resolved ion microscopy is employed to trace the generated ions at the focus. The presented beamline is designed for nonlinear XUV studies with attosecond isolated pulses.