Two-dimensional imaging and modeling of the 14.7 nm Ni-like Pd x-ray laser

At the Compact Multipulse Terawatt laser facility we produced saturated output on the Ni-like Pd x-ray laser line at 14.7 nm, using a 24, 600-ps prepulse followed 700 ps later by a 64, 6-ps drive pulse to illuminate a 1.25-cm-long Pd slab target. We used the LASNEX code to calculate the hydrodynamic evolution of the. plasma and provide the temperatures and densities to the CRETIN code, which then made the kinetics calculations to determine the gain. Experimental measurements of the two-dimensional near-field and far-field images are presented, and these are compared with the simulations. (C) 2003 Optical Society of America.