Investigation of highly ionized plasma plumes generated by CO2 laser irradiation of solid targets in strong axial magnetic fields

This chapter demonstrates the technique of creating uniform plasma conditions using laser irradiation and magnetic confinement. Topics covered include absorption near critical density, absorption in magnetically confined plume, radiative losses, a plasma plume technique, a plasma diagnostic apparatus, instrumentation for XUV-spectroscopy, results of plasma characterization experiments, and time resolved spectroscopic results (C4+ and C5+ ions). Plume formation is achieved by laser heating near the critical density and in a magnetically confined region. Scaling laws are derived to describe both processes. It is indicated that the strong temperature dependence of the laser absorption coefficient in a magnetically confined region results in very good radial uniformity. The temporal history of line radiation from recombining plasma plumes shows good agreement with results of modeling. Includes 2 photos and 2 diagrams