Astrophysical and inertial-confinement-fusion plasmas generated with millijoule femtosecond laser pulses

Abstract

By irradiating a target consisting of a thin aluminum slab buried in carbon with blue pedestal-free millijoule femtosecond laser pulses, it is shown that the aluminum slab can be isochorically (at constant volume) heated and thereby converted into a hot dense plasma. By analysing its K-shell emission, temperatures up to 500 eV are found. The experimentally observed increase in line-width with density is in accordance with theory. The long-standing issue of line shifting is resolved by demonstrating that there exists a real line shift increasing with increasing electron density as predicted by a recent theoretical investigation, and blending is a minor effect only.