Particle and x-ray energy measurements in laser-plasma interaction experiments

The energy carried by particles and low energy x-rays resulting from irradiation of targets with .5 to 1 TW, 1.06 μm lasers has been measured. The energy distributions were obtained from measurements at discrete locations using calorimeters and work is in progress to obtain them over a hemisphere with a thermal imaging system. Azimuthal symmetry and polar distributions for different focusing schemes have been determined. The data have been integrated to obtain the absorbed energy and these values compared to box calorimetry and optical energy balance. The relative emission of low energy x-rays from different Z materials can be obtained by comparing these data to charge collector data. Such comparisons also showed that the effective ion charge can be as low as a factor of two below the completely ionized state. The existence of low charge state ions has since been confirmed with high resolutions spectrometers