An analysis of a capillary plasma Z-pinch, designed as an alternative of pumping for soft X-ray lasers, is presented [1]. A simplified model of the dynamic plasma Z-pinch (so called "snow-plow" model) is used. It is supposed that initially a thin cylindrical layer is formed and separated from the capillary wall. The radial movement of the created sheet is driven by radial component of Lorentz force. The radius of the cylindrical sheet is decreased and the plasma particles being in front of the sheet are collected by it. The inward movement of the plasma sheet is decelarated if the magnetic pressure, caused by the electric current, is balanced by the kinetic pressure of the inner plasma. The minimum radius of the plasma sheet represents the pinch effect. In the next stage the plasma is expanded back towards the capillary wall, the pinch is broken up.

The quick plasma electron heating during the plasma coulmn compression is employed for collisional pumping of multicharge neon-like laser ions [2]. And, the plasma pinch decay is a possible way for recombination scheme of pumping of hydrogen-like and lithium-like laser ions.

The validity of our model has been approved by comparision of calculated and measured results of other authors.

References

[2] Vrba,P. - Vrbova,M.: Temperature Dependence of Ion Abundance in X-Ray Laser Mixtures, Proceedings of XXIV ICPIG, Contributed Papers vol. 1 (1999) 249-250.

This research has been supported by GACR grant No.102/99/1559.

Zpět