High-brightness laser plasma soft X-ray source using a double-stream gas puff target irradiated with the Prague Asterix Laser System (PALS)

High brightness laser plasma soft X-ray source based on a recently developed double-stream gas puff target irradiated with 0.5 ns laser pulses with energies up to 700 J from the Prague Asterix Laser System (PALS) is presented. The gas puff target was created by pulsed injection of xenon into a hollow stream of helium using an electromagnetic valve system with the double-nozzle setup. Soft X-ray emission was measured using the transmission grating spectrograph coupled to a CCD camera and the calibrated silicon photodiodes. The absolute soft X-ray production was determined to be 160 J for 540 J of laser energy, giving the soft X-ray conversion efficiency of about 30%. The source has been used in initial experiments on soft X-ray ablation of organic polymers and elemental solids.