NSF Award
9002172
This award will provide supplemental support to enable Dr. Robin Staffin of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to conduct collaborative research for 12 months with Dr. Toshihisa Tomie of the Electrotechnical Laboratory in Tsukuba, Japan. They will investigate the physics of plasma x-ray lasers, with a goal of scaling to shorter wavelengths to enable holographic imaging of live biological specimens. Since the demonstration five years ago of a laboratory x-ray laser, there has been a world-wide pursuit to extend lasing to higher powers, shorter wavelengths, and smaller divergence. This research will investigate the physics of plasma x-ray lasers via physical and numerical modeling, calculations of laser gain, trapping and propagation, and analysis of the conditions and requirements for x-ray laser coherence. The Krf excimer laser at the Electrotechnical Laboratory is well suited to these studies, and is complemented by the availability of Cray and Fujitsu supercomputers, which are necessary for the modeling studies. The collaboration between Dr. Tomie, an experimentalist, and Dr. Staffin, a theoretical modeler, should prove synergistic.
