Charge-exchange-driven X-ray emission from highly ionized plasma jets

¹ Université de Provence et CNRS, UMR 6633, Centre de St-Jérôme, PIIM F-13397 Marseille Cedex 20, France
² Russian Research Center Kurchatov - 123182 Moscow, Russia
³ Université de Paris VI - Paris, France
⁴ LULI - Palaiseau, France
⁵ Queens University - Belfast, BT7 1NN, UK
⁶ Institute of Physics - Prague, Czech Repulic

Received: 5 July 2006
Accepted: 12 October 2006

Abstract

The interaction of highly ionized laser-produced plasma jets with gases has been studied with X-ray microscopic methods. Simultaneous high spectral and 2-dimensional spatial resolution provided a detailed topological structure of the counter-propagating plasma and discovered a gas pressure-dependent X-ray emission structure inside the jets of H-like and He-like aluminum ions. At larger distances from the target, anomalous high (3 orders of magnitude) intensities of Li-like intercombination transitions from double excited states have been identified. Charge-exchange-driven cascading in autoionizing states is proposed to explain the experimental findings.