A colliding microjet liquid sheet target system was developed and tested for pairs of round nozzles of 10, 11 and 18 μm in diameter. The sheet’s position stability was found to be better than a few micrometers. Upon interaction with 50 mJ laser pulses, the 18 μm jet has a resonance amplitude of 16 μm at a repetition rate of 33 Hz, while towards 100 Hz it converges to 10 μm for all nozzles. A white-light interferometric system was developed to measure the liquid sheet thickness in the target chamber both in air and in vacuum, with a measurement range of 182 nm–1 μm and an accuracy of ±3%. The overall shape and 3D shape of the sheet follow the Hasson–Peck model in air. In vacuum versus air, the sheet gradually loses 10% of its thickness, so the thinnest sheet achieved was below 200 nm at a vacuum level of 10^–4 mbar, and remained stable for several hours of operation.

We developed a versatile 100 Hz laser system based on negatively and positively chirped pulse amplification. The few-cycle output provides pulses with 7.1 fs and 0.25 mJ, while the power output supports 26 fs pulses with 50 mJ. The energy as well as the pulse duration stability of the system are below 1%, while the pointing stability is within 25% of the diffraction-limited spot size. We also show applications in high repetition rate target development and preparation for a laser-generated X-ray source for industrial CT imaging.

Fe-based metallic glasses are ideal candidates to be utilized in transformer cores owing to their outstanding soft magnetic properties. However, they are difficult to machine properly by conventional means due to their mechanical brittleness and poor thermal conductivity. Here, the cutting of Fe₉₁–Si_4.5–C_4.0–Al_0.5 amorphous alloy ribbons is reported with a sub-50 fs laser pulses. A systematic study is performed on local morphological and chemical composition changes to the machined edge in comparison to crystalline metals. It is shown that only the innermost 80 $\mu$m wide region of the cut edge shows any detectable modifications, which is much less than for continuous laser machining. Therefore, the proposed method is indeed a valuable approach to overcome the fine machining difficulties of metallic glasses.

We developed a versatile 100 Hz laser system based on negatively and positively chirped pulse amplification. The few-cycle output provides pulses with 7.1 fs and 0.25 mJ, while the power output supports 26 fs pulses with 50 mJ. The energy as well as the pulse duration stability of the system is below 1%, while the pointing stability is within 25% of the diffraction limited spot size. We also show applications in high repetition rate target development and preparation for a laser-generated X-ray source for industrial CT imaging.