Extreme ultraviolet reflection efficiencies of diamond-turned aluminum, polished nickel, and evaporated gold surfaces

Grazing-incidence ellipsoidal reflector for longitudinally pumping short-wavelength lasers

We propose using a prolate ellipsoid for collecting and focusing soft-x-ray radiation from a laser-produced plasma to longitudinally pump short-wavelength lasers. Total collection efficiencies greater than 20% at 10 nm into gain regions with aspect ratios of 25 are possible. This geometry offers several advantages with respect to present transverse multiple-spot geometries.

Echelle spectrographs at grazing incidence

It is shown that by using the conical diffraction mount existing echelle gratings can be used at grazing incidence to achieve high spectral resolution in the extreme UV and soft x rays. Design considerations for grazing incidence echelle spectrographs are examined, and two sample designs are discussed. The first, for use in the extreme UV has a primary mirror and an entrance slit to the spectrograph. The system has resolution of 10(4), operates at any wavelength longward of 100 A, and covers 30% of the spectrum at a single setting. The x-ray spectrograph uses objective gratings to obtain spectral resolution of 2.8 x 10(4) over any factor of 2 in wavelength. It operates to wavelengths as short as 4 A.

X-ray monochromator designs based on extreme off-plane grating mountings

Several monochromator designs are presented in which the beam is incident on the grating nearly parallel to the grooves. The efficiency of such mountings, when obeying the blaze condition, is much higher than that of classical arrangements. Because only the Snell's components of the angular coordinates are varied, this high efficiency is found over the complete wavelength range. With the designs described the wavelength region from 0.6 to 100 nm can be covered without interchanging gratings. For each wavelength the spectral resolution can be increased to ~10(4). Entrance and exit slit positions and the corresponding beam orientations are fixed.