Abstract

In x-ray-laser experiments, a high-aspect-ratio line focus is very important because targets for x-ray lasers are long and narrow. Many schemes have been proposed for obtaining a long and narrow line focus and a uniform intensity distribution along the line focus, including beam smoothing techniques by using a random phase plate (RPP), an off-axis line-focus geometry with a spherical mirror,² a segmented wedge array (SWA)³ with an aperture, and a cylindrical lens array,⁴ However, RPP and SWA have a large energy loss and the off-axis spherical mirror is very difficult to align because tolerances as small as a few micrometers are required.

© 1995 Optical Society of America