Characterization of a transient collisional Ni-like molybdenum soft-x-ray laser pumped in grazing incidence

International audienceWe present experimental results from an extensive investigation of a Ni-like Mo x-ray laser pumped in the transient regime and GRIP configuration (GRazing Incidence Pumping). The pump laser is a 10 Hz, 1 J, Ti:sapphire laser system. The main diagnostic is a monochromatic near-field imaging system with a 1.7 micron spatial resolution that shows the soft-x-ray laser source size and position relative to the target surface. Changes of those characteristics are observed for different GRIP angles, varied between 15° and 21° , while keeping all other parameters constant. Intense lasing is observed routinely at 18.9 nm with up to 3 microjoule output energy and stable operation is demonstrated at 10 Hz. We have investigated the role of several pumping parameters, in particular, the relative energy and delay between the long and short pulse. We show that this multiparameter scan leads to a well-defined optimal regime of operation and better understanding of the GRIP configuration. Finally, as the GRIP scheme requires careful tailoring of the plasma conditions to the specific soft-x-ray laser under investigation, we add a prepulse before the plasma producing long pulse to generate large-scale preplasmas. This increases the brightness of the soft-x-ray beam and leads to an almost Gaussian near-field spatial profile