EUV optics in photoionization experiments

Abstract

In this work photoionized plasmas were created by irradiation of He, Ne and Ar gases with a focused EUV beam from one of two laser-plasma sources employing Nd:YAG laser systems of different parameters. First of them was a 10-Hz laser-plasma EUV source, based on a double-stream gas-puff target, irradiated with the 3-ns/0.8J laser pulse. EUV radiation in this case was focused using a gold-plated grazing incidence ellipsoidal collector in the wavelength range λ = 9÷70 nm. The most intense emission was in the relatively narrow spectral region centred at λ = 11 ± 1 nm. The second source was based on a 10 ns/10 J/10 Hz laser system. In this case EUV radiation was focused using a gold-plated grazing incidence multifoil collector or a Mo-coated ellipsoidal collector. The most intense emission in this case was in the 5 ÷ 15 nm spectral region. Radiation fluence ranged from 60 mJ/cm 2 to 400 mJ/cm 2 . Different gases were injected into the interaction region, perpendicularly to an optical axis of the irradiation system, using an auxiliary gas puff valve. Irradiation of the gases resulted in ionization and excitation of atoms and ions. Spectra in EUV range were measured using a grazing incidence, flat-field spectrometer (McPherson Model 251), equipped with a 450 lines/mm toroidal grating. In all cases the most intense emission lines were assigned to singly charged ions. The other emission lines belong to atoms or doubly charged ions. The spectra were excited in low density gases of the order of 1 ÷ 10% atmospheric density.