Open AccessOptical second harmonic generation in LiB3O5 modulated by intense femtosecond X-ray pulses
Author(s) -
Yunpei Deng,
Serhane Zerdane,
Xinhua Xie,
E. J. Divall,
Philip J. M. Johnson,
Christopher Arrell,
H. Lemke,
Roman Mankowsky,
A. Oggenfuss,
Cristian Svetina,
Christian Erny,
Claudio Cirelli,
Christopher J. Milne,
Gregor Knopp,
P. Beaud,
Steven L. Johnson
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
optics express
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.394
H-Index - 271
ISSN - 1094-4087
DOI - 10.1364/oe.388911
Subject(s) - optics , femtosecond , laser , ultrashort pulse , second harmonic generation , wavelength , physics , materials science , high harmonic generation , nonlinear optics
Many of the scientific applications for X-ray free-electron lasers seek to exploit the ultrashort pulse durations of intense X-rays to obtain femtosecond time resolution of various processes in a "pump-probe" scheme. One of the limiting factors for such experiments is the timing jitter between the X-rays and ultrashort pulses from more conventional lasers operating at near-optical wavelengths. In this work, we investigate the potential of using X-ray-induced changes in the optical second harmonic generation efficiency of a nonlinear crystal to retrieve single-shot arrival times of X-ray pulses with respect to optical laser pulses. Our experimental results and simulations show changes to the efficiency of the second harmonic generation of 12%, approximately three times larger than the measured changes in the transmission of the 800 nm center-wavelength fundamental pulse. Further experiments showing even larger changes in the transmission of 400 nm center-wavelength pulses show that the mechanism of the second harmonic generation efficiency modulation is mainly the result of X-ray-induced changes in the linear absorption coefficients near 400 nm. We demonstrate and characterize a cross-correlation tool based on this effect in reference to a previously demonstrated method of X-ray/optical cross-correlation.