Application of soft X-ray lasers for probing high density plasmas

The reliability and characteristics of collisionally pumped soft x-ray lasers make them ideal for a wide variety of plasma diagnostics. These systems now operate over a wavelength range extending from 35 to 400 {Angstrom} and have output energies as high as 10 mJ in 150 ps pulses. The beam divergence of these lasers is less than 15 mrad and they have a typical linewidth of {Delta}{lambda}/{lambda} {approximately} 10{sup -4} making them the brightest xuv sources available. In this paper we will describe the use of x-ray lasers to probe high density plasmas using a variety of diagnostic techniques. Using an x-ray laser and a multilayer mirror imaging system we have studied hydrodynamic imprinting of laser speckle pattern on directly driven thin foils with 1-2 {mu}m spatial resolution. Taking advantage of recently developed multilayer beamsplitters we have constructed and used a Mach-Zehnder interferometer operating at 155 {Angstrom} to probe 1-3 mm size laser produced plasmas with peak electron densities of 4 x 10{sup 21} cm{sup -3}. A comparison of our results with computer simulations will be presented.