Vacuum ultraviolet radiation from neon implosions

Summary Form only given, as follows. Neon implosions are being studied in order to produce a plasma suitable for photopumping with 11-AA Na X line radiation. The coincidence in wavelength of the Na X 1s/sup 2/-1s2p /sup 1/P (11.0027 AA) transition and the Ne IX 1s/sup 2/-1s4p /sup 1/P (11.0003 AA) transition is being utilized in resonant photopumping experiments directed toward the development of a soft-X-ray laser. A neon gas-puff Z-pinch, driven by a 5-kJ capacitor bank discharge, is being used to determine experimentally the conditions required to produce a neon plasma with ions predominately in the Ne IX ground state. Theoretical calculations for Na/Ne photopumping have indicated that neon temperatures of 50-100 eV and ion densities of 5*10/sup 17/ cm/sup -3/ to 10/sup 19/ cm/sup -3/ are required. A fast Z-pinch model used in the design of this experiment predicts that implosions with mass loadings of 3-9 mu g/cm driven by currents of 120-240 kA should produce such a neon plasma. A 1-m grazing incidence spectrograph is being used to identify the radiation from various ionization states of neon in the pinch. Spatially resolved pinhole-camera images and time-resolved vacuum-diode measurements are used to characterize the pinch. Effects of varying the neon mass loading and the driving-current waveshape are being investigated.<>