Generation of tunable extreme ultraviolet and soft X-ray radiation using high order harmonics

Summary form only given. High-order harmonic generation (HHG) in gases with sub-30 fs driving laser pulses has been demonstrated to be a powerful technique for the production of short-pulse coherent radiation in the soft-X-ray range up to 0.5 keV. Much of the efforts were directed towards understanding of existence of the plateau, and the position of the cutoff. A detailed analysis, with high spectral resolution, of the HHG processes in this ultrafast driving pulse temporal regime is still far from being complete. In this work we undertake a characterization of the spectrum emitted in the process of HHG in neon: both the harmonic spectral position and profile were investigated by changing experimental parameters. The excitation source was a Ti:sapphire laser providing 25-fs, 0.7-mJ pulses at 1 kHz. Particular attention was devoted to the laser design in order to deliver a pedestal-free excitation pulse.