Time evolution of a carbon plasma created from the ablated material of a capillary discharge

Abstract
A time resolved study of an ablative capillary discharge is reported herein. This work was carried out in order to better understand the difficulties of obtaining very high gains in carbon plasmas created by electrical discharges and dedicated to soft X-ray amplifiers. We used a time resolved diagnostic system including an imaging system and an XUV spectrometer, which allowed to determine experimentally the different phases of ionization of the plasma and to observe the cooling of the plasma by thermal diffusion. The capillary discharge bas been modeled using a collisional radiative code. The computed plasma parameters are compared with the values obtained experimentally. The population dynamics of hydrogen like carbon could also be simulated and shows that population inversions can be obtained on several Balmer lines.