X-ray grating spectrometer for opacity measurements in the 50 eV to 250 eV spectral range at the LULI 2000 laser facility.

An x-ray grating spectrometer was built in order to measure opacities in the 50 eV to 250 eV spectral range with an average spectral resolution ∼ 50. It has been used at the LULI-2000 laser facility at École Polytechnique (France) to measure the Δn = 0, n = 3 transitions of several elements with neighboring atomic number: Cr, Fe, Ni, and Cu in the same experimental conditions. Hence a spectrometer with a wide spectral range is required. This spectrometer features one line of sight looking through a heated sample at backlighter emission. It is outfitted with one toroidal condensing mirror and several flat mirrors cutting off higher energy photons. The spectral dispersion is obtained with a flatfield grating. Detection consists of a streak camera sensitive to soft x-ray radiation. Some experimental results showing the performance of this spectrometer are presented.

Opacity of iron, nickel, and copper plasmas in the x-ray wavelength range: theoretical interpretation of 2p-3d absorption spectra.

This paper deals with theoretical studies on the 2p-3d absorption in iron, nickel, and copper plasmas related to LULI2000 (Laboratoire pour l'Utilisation des Lasers Intenses, 2000J facility) measurements in which target temperatures were of the order of 20 eV and plasma densities were in the range 0.004-0.01 g/cm(3). The radiatively heated targets were close to local thermodynamic equilibrium (LTE). The structure of 2p-3d transitions has been studied with the help of the statistical superconfiguration opacity code SCO and with the fine-structure atomic physics codes HULLAC and FAC. A new mixed version of the sco code allowing one to treat part of the configurations by detailed calculation based on the Cowan's code RCG has been also used in these comparisons. Special attention was paid to comparisons between theory and experiment concerning the term features which cannot be reproduced by SCO. The differences in the spin-orbit splitting and the statistical (thermal) broadening of the 2p-3d transitions have been investigated as a function of the atomic number Z. It appears that at the conditions of the experiment the role of the term and configuration broadening was different in the three analyzed elements, this broadening being sensitive to the atomic number. Some effects of the temperature gradients and possible non-LTE effects have been studied with the help of the radiative-collisional code SCRIC. The sensitivity of the 2p-3d structures with respect to temperature and density in medium-Z plasmas may be helpful for diagnostics of LTE plasmas especially in future experiments on the Δn=0 absorption in medium-Z plasmas for astrophysical applications.

L-band x-ray absorption of radiatively heated nickel.

Absorption of L-M and L-N transitions of nickel has been measured using point projection spectroscopy. The x-ray radiation from laser-irradiated gold cavities was used to heat volumetrically nickel foils "tamped with carbon" up to 20 eV. Experimental spectra have been analyzed with calculations based on the spin-orbit split arrays statistical approach and performed for each ionic species Ni5+ to Ni11+. Using a least-squares fit, this method provides an ion distribution broader than at local thermodynamic equilibrium, which is explained by spatial and temporal temperature gradients. A major improvement in the simulation of the absolute value of transmission is obtained with a resolved transition array statistical calculation that reproduces the experimental spectrum with the nominal areal mass density by taking into account the saturation of narrow lines.