Demonstration of partially transparent thick metallic sodium in the vacuum ultraviolet spectral range

Daido, Hiroyuki; Suzuki, Yoji; Kawachi, Tetsuya; Fukuda, Takeshi*; Nakagiri, Toshio  ; Kaku, Masanori*; Kubodera, Masakazu*

We describe the direct measurement of actual transmittance of sodium samples with thickness of a 2 mm and 3 mm in a spectral range 115 nm, resulting in 50% transmittance of 3 mm thick solid and liquid sodium samples including transmission of a pair of the windows at the wavelength of 120 nm, giving an extinction coefficient of 10 to 10 which represents the sodium with a few cm thickness to be partially transparent for this wavelength. To confirm the measurement, we perform simple imaging experiments by the ultra-violet light passing through a 8 mm-thick sodium sample to illuminate a mesh as an object, resulting in obtaining a clear image.