Spectroscopically pure metal vapor source for highly charged ion spectroscopy and capillary discharge soft x-ray lasers.

We describe a compact, pulsed metal vapor source used for the production of dense plasma columns of interest for both soft x-ray laser research and spectroscopy of highly ionized plasmas. The source generates spectroscopically pure cadmium vapor jets in a room-temperature environment by rapidly heating an electrode with a capacitive discharge. In the configuration described herein, the metal vapor jet produced by the source is axially injected into a fast (up to 15 kA/ns), high current (up to 200 kA peak) capillary discharge to generate highly ionized cadmium plasma columns. Spectroscopic analysis of the discharge emission in the 12–25 nm spectral range evidences the dominance of Cu-like (CdXX) and Ni-like (CdXXI) lines and shows strong line emission at 13.2 nm from the 4d ¹S₀–4p ¹P₁ laser transition of Ni-like Cd. Hydrodynamic/atomic physics simulations performed to describe the dynamics of the plasma column and compute the optimum discharge conditions for laser amplification are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]