Demonstration of a discharge pumped table-top soft-x-ray laser

Abstract

We report the first observation of large soft-x-ray amplification (gl = 7.2) in a discharge-created plasma. A fast, ~40 kA, current pulse from a compact discharge was used to excite plasma columns up to 12 cm in length in 4-mm channels, producing population inversion in the J = 0-1 line of Ne-like Ar and resulting in a gain of 0.6 cm-1 at 46.9 nm. The beam divergence was measured to be <9 mrad.