Investigating the characteristics of x radiation from a hot plasma by means of glass-capillary converters

We have investigated the structure of the radiating region of an x-pinch plasma source by means of a new physical apparatus: a glass-capillary converter. We show that this converter unambiguously reproduces an image of the structure of the dense, hot x-pinch plasma in the soft-x-ray region of the spectrum. In comparison with standard pinhole cameras, this device lowers the intensity of hard x-radiation by two orders of magnitude and increases the image contrast. A new method is proposed for investigating the time evolution of the spatial distribution of the soft x-rays intensity of plasma sources.