Time evolution of a carbon plasma created from the ablated material of a capillary discharge

A time resolved study of an ablative capillary discharge is reported herein . This work was carried out in order to better understand the difficulties of obtaining very high gains in carbon plasmas created by electrical discha rges and dedicated to soft X-ray amplifiers. We used a time resolved diagno stic system including an imaging system and an XUV spectrometer, which allo wed to determine experimentally the different phases of ionization of the p lasma and to observe the cooling of the plasma by thermal diffusion. The ca pillary discharge has been modeled using a collisional radiative code. The computed plasma parameters are compared with the values obtained experiment ally. The population dynamics of hydrogen like carbon could also be simulat ed and shows that population inversions can be obtained on several Balmer l ines.