Time-compensated grazing-incidence monochromator for extreme-ultraviolet and soft X-ray high-order harmonics

The use of a grating monochromator for the selection of one or more high-order laser harmonics produced by a femtosecond pulse interacting with a gas jet may alter the duration of the pulse itself. This is due to the differences in the optical paths of the rays caused by ordinary diffraction when a grating is used. The time stretching can be almost eliminated by using two gratings in time-compensated configurations. Unfortunately, the classical diffraction mounting has low efficiency, overall in the extreme-ultraviolet region. High broadband efficiency can be obtained by using the conical diffraction mounting. A time-compensated monochromator with toroidal gratings used in conical diffraction is here presented. It is shown that the time compensation is very effective in a broad spectral region, ranging from VUV to soft X-rays, with much higher efficiency than the classical diffraction mounting.