Holographic interferometry of gas-puff Z-pinches

Summary Form only given, as follows. In the authors´ internal target X-ray laser schemes, a gas-puff Z-pinch plasma stagnates onto a layered annular X-ray laser target. A representative target consists of 3-mm-diameter, 2- mu m-thick parylene annulus with an outer coating of 200 nm of aluminum and an inner coating of 50 nm of nickel. The outer coating, or converter layer, is used to convert the kinetic energy of the imploding gas into line radiation of the converter layer species, which pumps the inner coating, or lasant species 1-D code calculations have shown that the amount of radiation from the converter layer is a sensitive function of the imploding sheath density, velocity, temperature, and gas species. Measurements of the imploding sheath prior to stagnation are useful both for comparisons with code calculations and for input to a code modeling the simpler problem of a plasma of known initial conditions stagnating onto a target. The authors have taken image-plane holographic interferograms of a Z-pinch implosion and used this diagnostic to observe the imploding sheath and plasma just prior to stagnation. Interferograms were taken of helium, neon, and xenon gas-puff implosions. They have also correlated the regions of density with regions of X-ray emission.<>