Abstract

Photopumped and recombination X-ray laser schemes are under investigation at Physics International, on the DNA/PITHON 3 TW facility. For the sodium-neon resonant photopumped scheme, DNA/PITHON is used to implode a sodium-bearing plasma, the pump, and a secondary capacitor bank is used to drive a neon gas puff Z-pinch, the lasant. The characterization of the pinched sodium plasma is reported in this paper, as are pump power measurements, which showed 65 GW in the Na X 1s²-1s²p ¹P line. In earlier experiments, neon gas was imploded onto sodium-fluoride coated targets, on-axis, but insufficient sodium pump powers were obtained. However, some very interesting spectral features, which could be an indication of recombination pumping, were observed in the neon plasmas formed when neon was imploded onto aluminum targets. These results are also presented in this paper.

© 1988 Optical Society of America