Demonstration of Mo soft x-ray lasers with a grazing incidence pumping scheme in the XL-II facility

A Ni-like Mo soft x-ray laser (SXRLs) operating at 18.9nm has been demonstrated by employing a grazing incidence pumping scheme with 120mJ in the 200ps pre-pulse and 140mJ in the 200fs main pulse. The SXRL gain is estimated to be 1.5-3cm^-1 when a grazing incidence angle of 14° is applied. Numerical simulations are also performed to investigate the dynamics of the ion distribution. It is found that a high intensity at 2.4 × 10¹⁴ W/cm² of the 200 fs main pulse could heat the pre-plasma rapidly to an appropriate temperature for population inversion, and could compensate for the shortage of the total pump energy to a certain extent.