Instrumentation for X-Ray Diagnostic Measurements on Laser-Produced Plasmas

A Nd-glass laser facility is described which is designed for studies of the laser-plasma interaction and for the development of special diagnostic instrumentation relevant to the problems of laserdriven fusion. The laser produces a 1-J, 200-psec pulse of 1.06-μm radiation which is focused into a 50--100-μm target spot to generate the plasma under study. An instrumentation package has been developed for performing x-ray diagnostic measurements to obtain information on plasma parameters. The package consists of a multichannel curved-crystal x-ray spectrograph (1 eV resolution at 1000 eV), calorimeters, and a fast x-ray diode (20-psec rise time) with a tenchannel single-shot sampler readout. This system records x-ray spectra, conversion efficiencies, and time histories of selected portions of the x-ray spectrum. With the integrated system, a complete set of data can be obtained on each laser shot.