Development of a thermal X-radiation source using “hot” hohlraums

Abstract High temperature (“hot”) hohlraums are being developed to heat samples to high temperatures for opacity or other atomic physics studies. Hot hohlraums have been fielded at the National Ignition Facility [D.E. Hinkel, et al., Phys. Plasmas 12 (2005) 056305] and the OMEGA [M.B. Schneider, et al., Phys. Plasmas 13 (2006) 112701] lasers. They reach high radiation temperatures by coupling a maximum amount of laser energy (10 kJ) into small, i.e., 400–800 μm diameter, gold hohlraums in a 1 ns pulse causing the hohlraums to fill with gold plasma. Radiation temperatures of 370 eV have been measured in the laser entrance hole (LEH) region of these targets [D.E. Hinkel, et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 96 (2006) 195001]. However, the LEH radiation is not the radiation drive of interest as the sample can neither be shielded from the non-thermal components of this radiation nor protected from the gold plasma. To mitigate these problems the source we are developing uses the radiation from the X-ray burnthrough of thin walls of a pair of hot hohlraums to heat a sample. We report on the measured radiation drive of this source and its use to heat a surrogate sample. We characterize the radiative heating of the sample by measuring its thermal expansion.