%0 Journal Article
%A Schulz, Sebastian
%A Grguraš, I.
%A Behrens, C.
%A Bromberger, H.
%A Costello, J. T.
%A Czwalinna, M. K.
%A Felber, M.
%A Hoffmann, M. C.
%A Ilchen, M.
%A Liu, Haiyun
%A Mazza, T.
%A Meyer, Michael
%A Pfeiffer, S.
%A Prędki, P.
%A Schefer, S.
%A Schmidt, C.
%A Wegner, U.
%A Schlarb, H.
%A Cavalieri, Adrian
%T Femtosecond all-optical synchronization of an X-ray free-electron laser
%J Nature Communications
%V 6
%@ 2041-1723
%C London
%I Nature Publishing Group
%M PUBDB-2015-01441
%P 5938 - 5949
%D 2015
%Z OA
%X Many advanced applications of X-ray free-electron lasers require pulse durations and time resolutions of only a few femtoseconds. To generate these pulses and to apply them in time-resolved experiments, synchronization techniques that can simultaneously lock all independent components, including all accelerator modules and all external optical lasers, to better than the delivered free-electron laser pulse duration, are needed. Here we achieve all-optical synchronization at the soft X-ray free-electron laser FLASH and demonstrate facility-wide timing to better than 30 fs r.m.s. for 90 fs X-ray photon pulses. Crucially, our analysis indicates that the performance of this optical synchronization is limited primarily by the free-electron laser pulse duration, and should naturally scale to the sub-10 femtosecond level with shorter X-ray pulses.
%F PUB:(DE-HGF)16
%9 Journal Article
%U <Go to ISI:>//WOS:000348742700011
%$ pmid:25600823
%R 10.1038/ncomms6938
%U https://bib-pubdb1.desy.de/record/207743