X-ray emission from colliding laser plasmas

Colliding Au, CD, and Ti-CR plasmas have been generated by illuminating two opposing foils each with an approximately 100J, 0.5 nsec, 2 ω Nd-glass laser beam from the Trident laser facility at Los Alamos. The plasmas are being used to study plasma interactions which span the parameter regime from interpenetrating to collisional stagnation. X-ray emission during the laser target interaction and the subsequent collision is used to diagnose the initial plasma conditions and the colliding plasma properties. X-ray instrumentation consists of a 100 ps gated x-ray pinhole imager, a time-integrated bremsstrahlung x-ray spectrograph and a gated x-ray spectrograph used to record isoelectronic spectra from the Ti-Cr plasmas. The imager has obtained multiframe images of the collision and therefore, a measure of the stagnation length which is a function of the ion charge state and density and a strong function of the electron temperature. Other instrumentation includes a Thomson scattering spectrometer with probe beam, neutron detectors used to monitor the CE coated foil collisions, and an ion spectrometer. We will describe the current status of the experiments and current results with emphasis on the x-ray emission diagnostics. We will also briefly describe the modeling using Lasnex and ISIS, a particle-in-cell code with massless fluid electronics and inter-particle (classical) collisions.