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Investigation of Early Plasma Evolution Induced by Ultrashort Laser Pulses
Published on: July 2, 2012
Experimental discovery of charge-exchange-caused dips in spectral lines from laser-produced plasmas
E Leboucher-Dalimier1, E Oks, E Dufour
1Physique Atomique dans les Plasmas Denses, LULI Unite Mixte No. 7605, CNRS-Ecole Polytechnique-CEA-Universite Paris VI, Case 128, 4 Place Jussieu, 75252 Paris Cedex 05, France.
Abstract:
We report the first experimental observation of charge-exchange-caused dips (also called x dips) in spectral lines of multicharged ions in laser-produced plasmas. Specifically, in the process of a laser irradiation of targets made out of aluminum carbide, we observed two x dips in the Ly(gamma) line of Al XIII perturbed by fully stripped carbon. From the practical point of view, this opens up a way to experimentally produce not-yet-available fundamental data on charge exchange between multicharged ions, virtually inaccessible by other experimental methods. From the theoretical viewpoint, the results are important because the x dips are the only one signature of charge exchange in profiles of spectral lines emitted by plasmas and they are the only one quasimolecular phenomenon that could be observed at relatively "low" densities of laser-produced plasmas.
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