Femtosecond-Terawatt Hard X-Ray Pulse Generation with Chirped Pulse Amplification on a Free Electron Laser

Advances of high intensity lasers have opened up the field of strong field physics and led to a broad range of technological applications. Recent x-ray laser sources and optics development makes it possible to obtain extremely high intensity and brightness at x-ray wavelengths. In this Letter, we present a system design that implements chirped pulse amplification for hard x-ray free electron lasers. Numerical modeling with realistic experimental parameters shows that near-transform-limit single-femtosecond hard x-ray laser pulses with peak power exceeding 1 TWand brightness exceeding 4 x 10(35) s(-1) mm(-2) mrad(-2)0.1% bandwdith(-1) can be consistently generated. Realization of such beam qualities is essential for establishing systematic and quantitative understanding of strong field x-ray physics and nonlinear x-ray optics phenomena.