Measurement of the extreme UV opacity of a hot dense gold plasma

Abstract

The absorption of soft X-rays by gold at density of ≈ 0.01 g/cm3 and temperature of ≈ 20 eV has been measured in the photon energy range of 50 to 300 eV. For that purpose, a thin gold foil tamped by carbon was heated by thermal X-rays generated in a laser-irradiated gold cavity and probed by X-rays emitted by a synchronized tungsten backlighter source. The measured absorption was compared with numerical calculations based on the super-transition-array model.