Observations of the intense soft X-ray emissions from ultra thin Au films irradiated with high contrast laser pulses

Ishino, Masahiko; Kado, Masataka; Nishikino, Masaharu; Shinohara, Kunio*; Tamotsu, Satoshi*; Yasuda, Keiko*; Hasegawa, Noboru; Kishimoto, Maki; Oba, Toshiyuki; Kawachi, Tetsuya

Proceedings of SPIE, Vol.7589, p.75891B_1 - 75891B_8, 2010/02

https://doi.org/10.1117/12.839945

Soft X-ray microscopes operating in the water window are capable of imaging living hydrated biological specimens. Laser produced plasmas are attractive soft X-ray sources, because of their short duration time. Based on the minimum dose calculation, soft X-ray photons more than 10 photons/m at the sample surface are needed to acquire an image of the biological specimens with spatial resolution up to 100 nm. The observations of soft X-ray emissions from laser produced plasmas using ultra thin film targets have been carried out. Au thin films were irradiated by a high contrast Nd:glass laser pulses. The spectral properties of emitted soft X-rays were monitored by an X-ray spectrograph from the rear side with respect to the surface of laser irradiation. The observed emission intensities had an obvious dependence on the film thickness, and the most intense emissions were obtained at the thickness of 28 nm. The experimental results have suggested that the most of the laser energy irradiated is absorbed by the film target, and it is resulted an efficient energy deposition from laser to X-rays.