Analysis of absorption features in dense argon plasmas

We discuss the analysis of absorption features observed in a series of high-density implosion experiments in which Ar-filled microballoons were irradiated with high-energy laser pulses. The experimental spectrum shows the time evolution of an absorption feature in the core gas as the implosion achieves stagnation. While previous applications of absorption spectroscopy have mainly relied on estimates of the intensity of absorption features to infer plasma environmental conditions, here we propose to study quantitatively details of their shape. To this end, we have computed theoretical Stark-broadened line profiles and compared them with the experimental spectra. The temperature and density sensitivity are studied