Observation of saturable absorption of Sn metal film with intense EUV laser pulse

In this work we report observation of ultra-fast switching of vacuum ultra-violet (VUV) light caused by saturable absorption by a solid metal foil. A sub-picosecond VUV pulse from a free-electron laser located in SPring-8 is focused on a metal target and transmission is measured as a function of input energy, thickness of the absorbing layer, and VUV laser wavelength. As is well known, metals have a strong linear free electron response associated with the plasma oscillation and collisional absorption (high-frequency resistivity). Due to the plasma screening and strong absorption, it is difficult to use bulk metals for optical components. However, above the plasma frequency as in our experiments, a metal can transmit light and shows phenomena related to the band gap structure, similar to the optical properties observed in transparent materials for visible and infrared light. We observe a strong gating of Sn transmission at energy fluences above 6J/cm2 at wavelength of 51nm. The ratio of the transmission at high intensity to low intensity is typically greater than 100:1. The estimated saturated transmittance is about 0.25. The mechanism of the switching phenomena is partially explained by the shift of Sn N shell band edge, however, more details should be investigated with more exact physical models and precise measurements. We think this is the first observation of such a strong nonlinear phenomena for VUV light and this result will promote the development of new nonlinear photonic devices such as auto-correlator and pulse slicer for the VUV region.