Commissioning of the Laser Beam Transport for the Femto-slicing Project at the Synchrotron SOLEIL

The aim of the Femto-Slicing project at SOLEIL is to generate 100 - 200 fs FWHM short X-ray pulses on two beamlines, CRISTAL and TEMPO, for pump-probe experiments in the spectral range of hard and soft X-rays. We note that this capability could be extended in the future to two or three more beamlines. Femtosecond lasers are currently in operation on TEMPO and CRISTAL beamlines, for pump-probe experiments on the ps time scale, enabling time resolved photo-emission and photo-diffraction studies, respectively. The Femto-Slicing project is based on the fs laser of the CRISTAL beamline, which can be adjusted to deliver 3 to 5 mJ pulses of 30 fs duration at 2.5 to 1 kHz, respectively. This laser beam is separated in three branches: one delivering about 2 mJ to the modulator wiggler and the other ones delivering the remaining energy to the experiments on the TEMPO and CRISTAL beamlines. This layout will yield natural synchronisation between Infra-Red (IR) laser pump and X-ray probe pulses, only affected by jitter and drift associated with beam transport. In this paper, we present the progress in the implementation and commissioning of the laser beam transport system and its characterization.