Abstract

A broadband, steady-state photoexcitation and photoionization pumping scheme is presented for hydrogenlike C plasmas. Gain in the Balmer-α transition of C vi is generated by a photoionization and three-body recombination process that is capable of an inversion density of the order of 0.1% of the total C vi density. This is achieved when an initially neutral C gas is exposed to the soft-x-ray radiation of a Ti target that is heated by a 10¹²-W/cm² frequency-doubled Nd-laser beam for a C-gas density of approximately 5 × 10¹⁸ cm⁻³. Under these conditions a gain of up to 10 cm⁻¹ is predicted at a wavelength of 182 Å over the entire volume of a plasma column with a diameter of 100 μm.

© 1991 Optical Society of America

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