X-ray backlighting for the National Ignition Facility (invited)

X-ray backlighting is a powerful tool for diagnosing a large variety of hig h-density phenomena. Traditional area backlighting techniques used at Nova and Omega cannot be extended efficiently to National Ignition Facility scal e. New, more efficient backlighting sources and techniques are required and have begun to show promising results. These include a backlit-pinhole poin t-projection technique, pinhole and slit arrays, distributed polychromatic sources, and picket-fence backlighters. In parallel, there have been develo pments in improving the data signal-to-noise and, hence, quality by switchi ng from film to charge-coupled-device-based recording media and by removing the fixed-pattern noise of microchannel-plate-based cameras. (C) 2001 Amer ican Institute of Physics.