INVESTIGATION ON THE HOMOGENEITY OF LINE PLASMAS CREATED WITH THE AIDOF A CYLINDRICAL LENS ARRAY

The homogeneity of plasma columns produced by line-focused laser radia tion has been investigated. An array of cylindrical lenses in conjunct ion with a spherical lens was used to produce a line focus with a unif ormity of the irradiance along the line of better then +/- 3%. The uni formity of the resulting plasma radiation in the keV range was studied for copper and aluminum plasmas created with both 700 ps and 100 ps s hots of a Nd:glass laser (lambda = 1054 nm) on slab targets at an irra diance of about 1 x 10(12) W/cm2 and 3 x 10(12) W/cm2, respectively.