Preplasma conditions for collisional Mo soft x-ray lasers with the grazing incidence pumping scheme

By comparing soft x-ray spectra from experiments with numerical calculation results, the preformed plasma medium was characterized for Mo 18:9 nm x-ray lasers with the grazing incidence pumping scheme. The effects of prepulse intensities and durations on the charge state distributions as well as other parameters of preformed plasmas were investigated for previously demonstrated soft x-ray lasers. Experiments with small total energy were conducted to check the understanding of reasons why Mo 18:9 nm soft x-ray lasers were realized on laser facility platforms with parameters varying so much.