Design and performance studies of an MCP based pinhole camera for laser-produced plasma diagnostics

An X-ray pinhole camera system has been developed and tested to obtain spatially resolved time-integrated X-ray images of laser-produced plasmas (Nd: YAG laser of 75mJ energy in 35 picoseconds) using a single stage micro channel plate (MCP) detector coupled to a CCD camera-frame grabber system instead of X-ray film. Thick slab targets of aluminium, copper and gold were used to produce plasmas with different X-ray yields at laser intensities ranging from 8 × 1011 to 8 × 1012 W/cm2. MCP gain was increased with the help of biasing voltages to record low intensity X-ray images, which have been analysed using an image processing software “PROMISE” developed in-house. The experimental results are presented.