Abstract

Gollisionally excited x-ray lasers require greater than 100 J of pump energy to achieve gain in high-Z elements. We experimentally investigated the possibility of lowering the pump energy requirement by using elements of lower Zand by pumping a slab target with a series of pulses. In our experiments the x-ray laser is pumped at a high repetition rate of 2 ppm by using a Lumonics Nd:YLF oscillator and a Nd:glass preamplifier, followed by an air-cooled Nd:glass zig-zag-slab power amplifier. The slab amplifier amplified a train of five 80ps pulses to approximately 1 J per pulse. The diagnostic for these experiments is a streaked concave grating spectrometer.

© 1993 Optical Society of America