Time Resolved Spectroscopy of Ultrashort Plasmas

Abstract

X-ray diagnostics are employed to characterize a plasma produced by a high contrast subpicosecond laser at intensities between 1016 W/cm2 and 1018 W/cm2. The plasma dynamics and the basic processes which control the duration of the X-ray pulse are quantitatively studied by means of polarization spectroscopy and time resolved spectroscopy with a picosecond temporal resolution. The experimental results are discussed with time dependent calculations of the atomic physics coupled to kinetic Fokker-Planck modelling.