title: Role of the precursor in a triple-pulse pumping scheme of a nickel-like silver soft-x-ray laser in the grazing-incidence-pumping geometry.
abstract: Soft x-ray lasers pumped in the grazing incidence geometry show strongly reduced energetic needs but hardly changed conversion efficiency between the pump energy and the output short-wavelength radiation. Numerical analysis presented in the paper concerns with performance of a Ni-like Ag soft-x-ray laser pumped by a triple-pulse structure in the grazing incidence geometry as a function of the puming conditions. It was found that a weak precursor preceding the main preforming and heating pulses by a few nanoseconds is crucial for the energy deposition. Its presence enables in different arrangements a reasonable reduction in the pump energy and relaxation of the steep density gradients as well as a control over partition of the deposited energy. As a consequence, it was concluded that a well energetically balanced three- or multipulse composition seems to be a reasonable way to achieve performance improvement.
authors.affiliation: Advanced Photonics Research Institute, Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology, Gwangju 500-712, Korea. kaj@gist.ac.kr
authors.forename: K A
authors.initials: KA
authors.lastname: Janulewicz
authors.forename: C M
authors.initials: CM
authors.lastname: Kim