Critical Components for XUV Probing of Laser Driven Shocks

International audience; Radiative shocks can be produced in gases using high-energy lasers. As the electron density may be higher than the critical density for visible light, radiography with soft x-ray radiation becomes very promising technique to probe these shocks. Feasibility of this method has been proven employing zinc soft x-ray laser at 21.2 nm as backlighter. The experiment has shown high requirements on quality of the imaging optics and windows of the gas filled cell.