Table-top soft X-ray laser interferograms of dense laser-created plasma

We report soft X-ray interferograms that illustrate the use of a very compact table-top soft X-ray laser in mapping the electron density evolution of a dense plasma. The spatial density distribution of a point-focus laser-created plasma with /spl sim/300 /spl mu/m dimension was measured for densities up to /spl sim/6.5 /spl times/ 10/sup 20/ cm/sup -3/.