| Summary: | <p>The advent of the 4th generation X-ray sources paves the way for a new phase of experimental investigation of Hot-Dense plasmas. At the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS), pulses of keV X-rays, shorter than 100 fs, and with intensities up to 10<sup>18</sup> W·cm<sup>-2</sup>, are routinely produced, allowing for the production of uniform samples of solid-density plasmas. The simple single-photon X-ray absorption mechanism can be easily modelled, so that the plasma conditions can be accurately retrieved, without relying on diagnostic techniques that are not benchmarked in this high density regime.</p> <p>The work presented here describes the results of the first experiment where the LCLS interacts with a solid Al target, isochorically heating it at temperatures up to 190 eV. The system is described by the SCFLY non-LTE model, where the density and temperature are computed self consistently, as a consequence of the detailed atomic processes, rather than imposed by the user. The approximations affecting the simulations are discussed in detail.</p> <p>The code is first validated, by modelling the charge state distribution measured in a previous experiment (L. Young <em>et. al</em>), where the LCLS interacts with a Ne gas, a simplified (collisionless) problem. Then it is used to model the K-alpha spectroscopic data obtained for Al. The plasma evolution, explained by SCFLY simulations, is found to be primarily determined by collisions, whose visible effects on the experimental spectra are discussed.</p> <p>By varying the wavelength of the laser and observing the change in the K-alpha fluorescence, the K-edges for different ions in the plasma were determined, leading to a charge resolved measurement of continuum lowering in the HDM system. The results disagree with the widely used Stewart-Pyatt model, with the disagreement increasing for higher charge states, but are consistent with the older Ecker-Kroell model. These results have profound implications for dense plasma modelling.</p>
|
|---|