TY  - JOUR
AU  - Schulz, Sebastian
AU  - Grguraš, I.
AU  - Behrens, C.
AU  - Bromberger, H.
AU  - Costello, J. T.
AU  - Czwalinna, M. K.
AU  - Felber, M.
AU  - Hoffmann, M. C.
AU  - Ilchen, M.
AU  - Liu, Haiyun
AU  - Mazza, T.
AU  - Meyer, Michael
AU  - Pfeiffer, S.
AU  - Prędki, P.
AU  - Schefer, S.
AU  - Schmidt, C.
AU  - Wegner, U.
AU  - Schlarb, H.
AU  - Cavalieri, Adrian
TI  - Femtosecond all-optical synchronization of an X-ray free-electron laser
JO  - Nature Communications
VL  - 6
SN  - 2041-1723
CY  - London
PB  - Nature Publishing Group
M1  - PUBDB-2015-01441
SP  - 5938 - 5949
PY  - 2015
N1  - OA
AB  - 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.
LB  - PUB:(DE-HGF)16
UR  - <Go to ISI:>//WOS:000348742700011
C6  - pmid:25600823
DO  - DOI:10.1038/ncomms6938
UR  - https://bib-pubdb1.desy.de/record/207743
ER  -