Hybrid x-ray laser-plasma/laser-synchrotron facility for pump-probe studies of the extreme state of matter at NRC "Kurchatov Institute".

We developed a hybrid optical pump-x-ray probe facility based on the "Kurchatov's synchrotron radiation source" and terawatt (TW) femtosecond laser. The bright x-ray photon source is based on either synchrotron radiation [up to 6 × 10 photons/(s mm mrad 0.1% bandwidth)] or laser-plasma generators (up to 10 photons/sr/pulse).

Malignant and benign thyroid nodule differentiation through the analysis of blood plasma with terahertz spectroscopy.

The liquid and lyophilized blood plasma of patients with benign or malignant thyroid nodules and healthy individuals were studied by terahertz (THz) time-domain spectroscopy and machine learning. The blood plasma samples from malignant nodule patients were shown to have higher absorption. The glucose concentration and miRNA-146b level were correlated with the sample's absorption at 1 THz.

Free-beam spectral self-compression at supercritical peak powers.

We demonstrate free-beam spectral self-compression of ~100-GW femtosecond laser pulses due to self-phase modulation (SPM) in a transparent dielectric. While all the earlier studies of SPM-induced spectral narrowing have been performed using optical fibers, experiments and simulations presented in this Letter show that this type of spectral transformation can be implemented as a part of a full three-dimensional field-waveform dynamics and can be extended to peak powers ∼10 times higher than the critical power of self-focusing. With a properly chosen initial chirp, spectral self-compression is accompanied by pulse compression, providing spectral-temporal mode self-compression as a whole.