L-shell X-ray conversion yields for laser-irradiated tin and silver foils

TL;DR

This study investigates the efficiency of L-shell X-ray emission from laser-irradiated tin and silver foils, demonstrating higher yields for silver and analyzing emission patterns through experiments and simulations.

Contribution

It provides new experimental data and simulation analysis of L-shell X-ray yields from Ag and Sn foils under laser irradiation, highlighting differences in emission efficiency and angular distribution.

Findings

Silver yields are approximately twice those of tin.

Emission is isotropic on the laser-irradiated side and cosine-like on the non-irradiated side.

Simulations slightly overestimate experimental yields.

Abstract

We have employed the VULCAN laser facility to generate a laser plasma X-ray source for use in photoionisation experiments. A nanosecond laser pulse with an intensity of order ${10}^{15}$ W{cm}$^{-2}$ was used to irradiate thin Ag or Sn foil targets coated onto a parylene substrate, and the L-shell emission in the $3.3-4.4$ keV range was recorded for both the laser-irradiated and non-irradiated sides. Both the experimental and simulation results show higher laser to X-ray conversion yields for Ag compared with Sn, with our simulations indicating yields approximately a factor of two higher than found in the experiments. Although detailed angular data were not available experimentally, the simulations indicate that the emission is quite isotropic on the laser-irradiated side, but shows close to a cosine variation on the non-irradiated side of the target as seen experimentally in previous work.