'Portable' soft x-ray laser. Phase 1. Final report, 1 Aug 92-31 Mar 92

Technical Report · Fri May 22 04:00:00 EDT 1992

OSTI ID:7176046

Polonski, L

A very useful compact soft X-ray laser (SXL) can be constructed based on the achievements of two laboratories: Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) and Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL). In the PPPL experiment, gain at a wavelength of 18.2 nm was demonstrated in a recombining carbon plasma pumped transversely by a Nd/YLF laser of relatively low energy and without the use of an external magnetic field. However, the effective lasing length was probably limited by refraction effects in the plasma or its nonuniformity, or both. In the RAL experiment for collisionally excited germanium soft X-ray laser, two adjacent lasing media, pumped from opposite directions, provided compensation for the refraction. The PXL Team proposed to adopt RAL's concept to the recombination SXL in order to build a compact, table-top-18.2 nm laser with output pulse energy around 20 uJ. It will be about two orders of magnitude more intense than a laser-produced plasma, with the radiation concentrated in a 10 mradian cone. The beam divergence will decrease another three orders of magnitude with development of a cavity.

• Research Organization: Princeton X-Ray Laser, Inc., Monmouth Junction, NJ (United States)
• OSTI ID: 7176046
• Report Number(s): AD-A-251833/0/XAB; CNN: N00014-91-C-2241
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

42 ENGINEERING
426002* -- Engineering-- Lasers & Masers-- (1990-)
AMPLIFICATION
CARBON
DESIGN
DIMENSIONS
ELECTROMAGNETIC RADIATION
ELEMENTS
EQUIPMENT
GAIN
GERMANIUM
IONIZING RADIATIONS
LASER MATERIALS
LASER-PRODUCED PLASMA
LASERS
LENGTH
MAGNETIC FIELDS
MATERIALS
METALS
NEODYMIUM LASERS
NONMETALS
PLASMA
PORTABLE EQUIPMENT
PULSES
RADIATIONS
REFRACTION
SOFT X RADIATION
SOLID STATE LASERS
X RADIATION
X-RAY LASERS