Emerging trends in X-ray spectroscopic studies of plasma produced by intense laser beams

X-ray line emission from hot dense plasmas, produced by ultra-short high intensity laser systems, has been studied experimentally in recent years for applications in materials science as well as for back-lighter applications. By virtue of the CPA technology, several laser facilities delivering pulses with peak powers in excess of one petawatt (focused intensities > 1020 W-cm−2) have either been commissioned across the globe during the last few years or are presently under construction. On the other hand, hard x-ray sources on table top, generating ultra-short duration x-rays at a repetition rate up to 10 kHz, are routinely available for time resolved x-ray diffraction studies. In this paper, the recent experiments on x-ray spectroscopic studies of plasma produced by 45 fs, Ti:sapphire laser pulses (focused iintensity > 1018 W-cm−2) at RRCAT Indore will be presented.