Transient collisional excitation X-ray lasers with 1-ps tabletop drivers

Recent results are presented for 1-ps driven X-ray laser amplification in Ne-like and Ni-like transient collisional excitation research at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Plasma formation, ionization and collisional excitation are optimized using two laser pulses of 600- and 1-ps duration at tabletop energies of typically 5 J or less in each beam. Gain of 35 cm/sup -1/ and higher has been measured on the 147 /spl Aring/ 4d/spl rarr/4pJ=0/spl rarr/1 transition of Ni-like Pd and is a direct consequence of the nonstationary population in, version produced by the high intensity picosecond pulse. We report the characterization of the X-ray laser properties including the transient gain lifetime and beam divergence for different Ne-like and Ni-like X-ray lasers.