Strongly aligned gas-phase molecules at free-electron lasers

摘要: Here, we demonstrate a novel experimental implementation to strongly align molecules at full repetition rates of free-electron lasers. We utilized the available in-house laser system coherent x-ray imaging beamline linac light source. Chirped pulses, i.e., direct output from regenerative amplifier Ti:Sa chirped pulse amplification system, were used 2, 5-diiodothiophene in molecular beam. The alignment pulses had energies few mJ and duration 94 ps. A degree $$\langle {\mathrm{cos}}^{2}{\theta }_{2{\rm{D}}}\rangle =0.85$$ was measured, limited by intrinsic temperature beam rather than system. With general availability synchronized chirped-pulse-amplified near-infrared systems short-wavelength facilities, our approach allows for universal preparation tightly fixed space experiments with pulses.