Photoionized plasmas induced in neon with extreme ultraviolet and soft X-ray pulses produced using low and high energy laser systems

A comparative study of photoionized plasmas created by two soft X-ray and extreme ultraviolet (SXR/EUV) laser plasma sources with different parameters is presented. The two sources are based on double-stream Xe/He gas-puff targets irradiated with high (500 J/0.3 ns) and low energy (10 J/1 ns) laser pulses. In both cases, the SXR/EUV beam irradiated the gas stream, injected into a vacuum chamber synchronously with the radiation pulse. Irradiation of gases resulted in formation of photoionized plasmas emitting radiation in the SXR/EUV range. The measured Ne plasma radiation spectra are dominated by emission lines corresponding to radiative transitions in singly charged ions. A significant difference concerns origin of the lines: K-shell or L-shell emissions occur in case of the high and low energy irradiating system, respectively. In high energy system, the electron density measurements were also performed by laser interferometry, employing a femtosecond laser system. A maximum electron density for Ne plasma reached the value of 2·1018 cm−3. For the low energy system, a detection limit was too high for the interferometric measurements, thus only an upper estimation for electron density could be made.