title: Hydrodynamic study of plasma amplifiers for soft-x-ray lasers: a transition in hydrodynamic behavior for plasma columns with widths ranging from 20 μm to 2 mm.
abstract: Plasma-based seeded soft-x-ray lasers have the potential to generate high energy and highly coherent short pulse beams. Due to their high density, plasmas created by the interaction of an intense laser with a solid target should store the highest amount of energy density among all plasma amplifiers. Our previous numerical work with a two-dimensional (2D) adaptive mesh refinement hydrodynamic code demonstrated that careful tailoring of plasma shapes leads to a dramatic enhancement of both soft-x-ray laser output energy and pumping efficiency. Benchmarking of our 2D hydrodynamic code in previous experiments demonstrated a high level of confidence, allowing us to perform a full study with the aim of the way for 10-100 μJ seeded soft-x-ray lasers. In this paper, we describe in detail the mechanisms that drive the hydrodynamics of plasma columns. We observed transitions between narrow plasmas, where very strong bidimensional flow prevents them from storing energy, to large plasmas that store a high amount of energy. Millimeter-sized plasmas are outstanding amplifiers, but they have the limitation of transverse lasing. In this paper, we provide a preliminary solution to this problem.
authors.affiliation: Instituto de Fusión Nuclear, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, 28006 Madrid, Spain. eduardo.oliva@ensta-paristech.fr
authors.forename: Eduardo
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Oliva
authors.forename: Philippe
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Zeitoun
authors.forename: Pedro
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Velarde
authors.forename: Marta
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Fajardo
authors.forename: Kevin
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Cassou
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Ros
authors.forename: Stephan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Sebban
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Portillo
authors.forename: Sebastien
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: le Pape
mesh_terms: D004583:Electrons; D057446:Hydrodynamics; D007834:Lasers; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D058626:Plasma Gases; D014965:X-Rays
chemical_list: D058626:Plasma Gases