Modeling of the influence of the driving laser wavelength on the beam quality of transiently pumped X-ray lasers

A three dimensional ray tracing code (SHADOX) has been developed, as a post-processor of any hydrodynamic/atomic code, to model X-ray laser beam propagation along the amplifying medium and any optical component. In this paper we show a study aimed to investigate the influence of the long driving pulse wavelength on the transiently pumped X-ray laser propagation and amplification. Different pumping configurations have been modeled and their respective influence on the beam quality has been investigated. This work shows that the beam homogeneity is highly sensitive to both the emissive zone dimension and electron density gradient and that pumping by a double pulse in a two-color configuration (2ω/ω; Δt=200ps) is favorable in terms of beam quality.