Ablative Acceleration of Pellet Shells Irradiated by External Soft X-ray Sources

Abstract
The first direct experimental measurement of soft X-ray driven ablation pressure has been done using a spherical pellet target and external soft X-ray sources. It has been found that the pressure is about 10 Mbar at an incident X-ray intensity I x of 1013 W/cm2 for glass and CH targets, and its intensity scaling is I x 0.8. X-ray backlighted pellet images indicate that X-ray geometrical smoothing at indirect irradiation is very effective for symmetrizing the implosion.