A transmission grating spectrometer for plasma diagnostics

Radiation temperature is an important parameter in characterizing the properties of hot plasmas. In most cases this temperature is time varying caused by the short lived and/or time dependent nature of the plasma. Thus, a measurement of the radiation flux as a function of time is quite valuable. To this end we have developed a spectrometer that can acquire spectra with a time resolution of less than 1 ns and covers the spectral energy range from /spl sim/60 to 1000 eV. The spectrometer consists of an entrance slit placed relatively near the plasma, a thin gold film transmission grating with aperture, a micro channel plate (MCP) detector with a gold cathode placed at the dispersion plane and an electron lens to focus the electrons from the MCP onto a phosphor coated fiber optic plug. The phosphor (In:CdS) has a response time of /spl sim/500 ps. This detector system, including the fast phosphor is similar to one that has been previously described. The spectrometer is in a vacuum chamber that is turbo pumped to a base pressure of /spl sim/5/spl times/10/sup -7/ torr. The light from the phosphor is coupled to two streak cameras through 100 m long fiber optic cables. The streak cameras with their CCD readouts provide the time resolution of the spectrum. The spectrometer has a built in alignment system that uses an alignment telescope and retractable prism.