Two-beam interferometric encoding of photoluminescent gratings in LiF crystals by high-brightness tabletop soft x-ray laser

摘要

Two-beam interferometric encoding of periodic lines of permanent color centers in LiF has been obtained by use of an intense and high spatially coherent soft x-ray laser beam. A spatial resolution of the lines less than 1 μm is demonstrated. We have used the 46.9 nm laser pulses (0.3 mJ, 1.7 ns at 0.2 Hz) produced in compact capillary discharges. Due to the low penetration depth of their radiation, their high brightness and spatial coherence, soft x-ray lasers can represent a powerful tool to encode integrated optical devices having low dimensionality and high spatial resolution inside optically transparent dielectrics, in extremely short exposure times.