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Diamond, photoconductive devices (DPCDs) have proven to be stable detectors of x-ray emission from plasmas. An array of six DPCDs is used on the OMEGA target chamber to measure the temporal and spectral dependence of x rays emitted from targets. 100 ps laser pulses incident on high-Z targets are used to measure the time response of the detectors, bias circuits, cables, and digitizer. This information is used to deconvolve the measured data to extract the temporal shape of the x-ray emission. The x-ray spectrum is measured by placing absorber filters for a specific x-ray energy region in front of the DPCDs. The data are analyzed with a linear algebraic method to determine the spectral shape. This technique removes the need to apply smoothing to the spectral analysis and provides “confidence bands” for the x-ray spectrum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

X-ray spectrometers using elliptically bent crystals have desirable properties for applications requiring broad spectral coverage, good spectral resolution, and minimized source broadening. Previous work used custom-positioned film or microchannel plate detectors. We find it is also useful and cost-effective to field elliptical crystals in existing snouts on the face-on gated microchannel plate framing cameras commonly used at many facilities. We numerically explored the full design space (spectral range and resolution) of elliptical crystals compatible with the new multipurpose spectrometer snout. We have tested at the Omega laser an elliptical rubidium acid phthalate crystal with 174 mm focal length, 0.9885 eccentricity, and 4.6° inclination, viewing from 1.0 to at least 1.7 keV with spectral resolution E/dE of 300–500. A slit (2×magnification) images 3 mm sources with 70 μm spatial resolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]