Physics Department Colloquia |
One example is our recent work on stimulated x-ray emission spectroscopy. Here, we have created inner shell x-ray fluorescence laser signals from manganese compounds. To achieve this exponential signal gain, we used highly focused ultrashort x-ray pump pulses from LCLS. The observed signal consisted of very short x-ray pulses up to 10^6 times stronger than normal x-ray fluorescence. Remarkably, these x-ray pulses preserved the small differences in fluorescence energy, caused by the different chemical surrounding of the manganese ions. We describe the phenomena and how we plan to apply this and similar approaches to learn more about transition metal systems and their function in catalysis, chemical, and materials science.