Observation and theory of X-ray mirages

Magnitskiy, S.*; Nagorskiy, N.*; Faenov, A.*; Pikuz, T.; Tanaka, Momoko; Ishino, Masahiko; Nishikino, Masaharu; Fukuda, Yuji; Kando, Masaki; Kawachi, Tetsuya; Kato, Yoshiaki* 

Advent of plasma-based transient collisional excitation X-ray lasers allowed us to realize compact coherent X-ray sources, thus opening the way to a wide range of applications. Here we report the observation of unexpected concentric rings in the far-field beam profile at the output of a two-stage plasma-based X-ray laser developed in Japan Atomic Energy Agency, which can be considered as the first manifestation of a mirage phenomenon in X-rays. We have developed a method of solving the Maxwell-Bloch equations, which has allowed to find that the observed phenomenon is due to the emergence in the plasma-amplifier of X-ray mirage in the form of the phase matched coherent virtual point source. The obtained results bring a new insight into physical nature of amplification of X-ray radiation in laser-induced plasma amplifiers and open new opportunities for X-ray plasma diagnostics and extreme UV lithography.