The present trends in the development work on X-ray lasers are shown and discussed on a background of a brief history of the collisionally pumped X-ray lasers. The presentation is focused on two variants of the transient inversion pump method succesfully applied in the experiments - slab target geometry and single profiled laser pulse. Recently, another scheme referred to as GRIP (GRazing Incidence Pumping) has been proposed and demonstrated. This pump geometry opens the new real possibility to construct a repetitive X-ray laser. Some aspects of the pump scheme implementation are discussed in detail. Finally, a specific injector-amplifier system giving a new perspective on the future of X-ray lasers is dicussed briefly as well.

Date Published: 11 October 2005
PDF: 9 pages
Proc. SPIE 5958, Lasers and Applications, 595813 (11 October 2005); doi: 10.1117/12.623338

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 5958:
Lasers and Applications
Krzysztof M. Abramski; Antonio Lapucci; Edward F. Plinski, Editor(s)