Abstract

New facilities for XUV laser research have recently been brought into operation at the SERC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in the U.K. The new apparatus provides irradiation of targets at power levels of more than 1 TW in line focus geometry with length up to 2 cm and width down to 25 μm. In addition new subnanosecond time-resolved XUV diagnostics have been developed using streak cameras coupled to aperiodic grazing incidence diffraction gratings, producing a dispersed spectrum in a flat field. A consortium of U.K. research groups has been using the new facilities to study and develop XUV lasers based on recombination.

© 1986 Optical Society of America