- Habib, A;
- Manahan, G;
- Scherkl, P;
- Heinemann, T;
- Sutherland, A;
- Altuiri, R;
- Alotaibi, B;
- Litos, M;
- Cary, J;
- Raubenheimer, T;
- Hemsing, E;
- Hogan, M;
- Rosenzweig, J;
- Williams, P;
- McNeil, B;
- Hidding, B
Electron beam quality is paramount for X-ray pulse production in free-electron-lasers (FELs). State-of-the-art linear accelerators (linacs) can deliver multi-GeV electron beams with sufficient quality for hard X-ray-FELs, albeit requiring km-scale setups, whereas plasma-based accelerators can produce multi-GeV electron beams on metre-scale distances, and begin to reach beam qualities sufficient for EUV FELs. Here we show, that electron beams from plasma photocathodes many orders of magnitude brighter than state-of-the-art can be generated in plasma wakefield accelerators (PWFAs), and then extracted, captured, transported and injected into undulators without significant quality loss. These ultrabright, sub-femtosecond electron beams can drive hard X-FELs near the cold beam limit to generate coherent X-ray pulses of attosecond-Angstrom class, reaching saturation after only 10 metres of undulator. This plasma-X-FEL opens pathways for advanced photon science capabilities, such as unperturbed observation of electronic motion inside atoms at their natural time and length scale, and towards higher photon energies.