Dynamics of laser-irradiated planar targets measured by x-ray spectroscopy

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Abstract
The dynamics of planar plastic targets seeded with small amounts of sulfur as a diagnostic tracer is studied spectroscopically. The time-dependent x-ray emission of the hydrogenic and heliumlike sulfur is used to provide a measure of the plasma parameters. The experiment, which is designed to provide optically thin x-ray lines with small transverse gradients, is analyzed by the coupling of a kinetics model to a hydrodynamics simulation. The results of the analysis show that the time histories of the x-ray line intensities can be used as a plasma diagnostic to constrain the modeling. Intensity ratios between ionization stages cannot be accurately modeled even including time-dependent ionization effects. This disagreement appears to be due to detailed assumptions concerning electron distributions and transport.