Lasing of a cavity-based X-ray source

The invention of the laser transformed optics by providing intense, coherent light in the visible region, but extending this concept to X-rays has been hindered by a lack of suitable gain media and mirrors. Current hard X-ray free-electron laser (XFEL) facilities^1-5 overcome this by amplifying shot noise from a high-peak-current electron bunch via self-amplified spontaneous emission⁶ in a single pass through long undulators, delivering very high brightness but with a noisy, multi-spiked temporal and spectral profile. Cavity-based XFELs (CBXFELs)^7-9 were proposed to close this gap by recirculating spectrally filtered X-ray pulses in a Bragg-reflecting cavity synchronized to a high-repetition-rate electron beam. Here we show lasing with multi-pass gain at 6.952 keV in a 132.8-m round-trip diamond-based Bragg cavity¹⁰ at the European XFEL, matched to the 2.23-MHz bunch spacing of the superconducting accelerator⁵. Under stringent length and angular stability requirements, a ring-up in the cavity across successive bunches was observed, producing spectrally pure, microjoule-level pulses. This establishes the feasibility of CBXFELs in an accelerator environment and validates diamond Bragg optics for X-ray resonators. The demonstrated spectral purity opens a path to next-generation X-ray science, which demands highly coherent, stable sources.