Three-dimensional plasma structure reconstruction from mutually orthogonal streaks of nonaxisymmetric laser-produced plasma plumes.

A method is developed for structure reconstruction of an arbitrary plasma from two luminosity streaks and a front-view snapshot as a weighting function (WF). Two scaling relations link the pressure and temperature to the local specific emission intensity. A trial plasma structure is proposed in terms of specific intensity, and the luminosity streaks are calculated according to the Saha equilibrium. Plasma absorption is included. Error signals between the calculated and measured luminosity are allocated according to the WF to find corrections to local specific intensities. Minimization of the errors completes the reconstruction at a given time, which in turn updates the WF for the next time step. Summing over the full plasma over time facilitates calculation of the total plasma mass, energy and beam attenuation through the plasma. When agreement with their measured counterparts is maximized, the scaling relations are calibrated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]