THOMSON SCATTERING IN THE CORONA OF LASER-PRODUCED GOLD PLASMAS

Thomson scattering measurements of the electron temperature in laser-p roduced gold plasmas are presented. We irradiated a flat gold disk tar get with one laser beam of the Nova laser facility at an angle of 64 d egrees from the normal. A second laser beam probed the plasma at a dis tance of 500 mu m with temporally resolved Thomson scattering. The ele ctron temperature measurements are compared with hydrodynamic simulati ons using the code LASNEX for experiments applying smoothed and unsmoo thed heater beams. In case of an unsmoothed heater beam the simulation s predict temperatures which are about 40% higher than our measured da ta. Although the agreement is improved for a smoothed heater beam, dis crepancies exist in the decay phase of the plasma. We discuss possible explanations for these observations. (C) 1997 American Institute of P hysics.