Since arrival of FY-98 funding under this grant in December, we have been preparing for our first series of experiments under this grant at the University of Rochester Laboratory for Laser Energetics (LLE) on the Omega laser facility, now scheduled the week beginning May 4, 1998. We will again be fielding our flat-field, grazing-incidence extreme-ultraviolet (euv) spectrograph with a four-channel gated-stripline microchannel plate (MCP) detector, which is mounted on the outside of the vacuum chamber approximately 60 inches from the center. In addition, we will be using for the first time our newly constructed flat field spectrograph covering the spectral range of 30-250 {angstrom} (hv = 50-400 eV), designed to fit into a Ten Inch Manipulator (TIM). As such, it can be located closer to the central target position, with an expected enhancement in sensitivity of at least a factor-of-ten. It is the preparation of this instrument that mainly has occupied our attention so far in this grant period and discussed in this report.

Under this FY-97 NLUF grant, we primarily carried out spectral line and continuum diagnostics at early times and in the coronal region of the plasma using our flat-field grazing-incidence spectrograph, improved to incorporate time resolution at wavelengths extending below the carbon K-absorption edge using a gated microchannel plate detector. These experiments were carried out on the OMEGA facility. Fifty-nine beams were focused onto the target, providing nominally 18 kJ of energy in a 1 ns pulse for an irradiance of {approximately}2{times}10{sup 14}/cm{sup 2}. Some beam smoothing, provided by spectral dispersion, was used, but may not have been particularly effective alone, i.e., without the presence of distributed phase plates in the beams. The plastic microballoon targets were nominally 900 {mu}m in diameter with 10- and 20-{mu}m thick walls, and were filled with neon to a pressure of 10 atm. Overcoatings of Mg and Al in thicknesses ranging from 0.2 to 4 {mu}m were applied. A 1-{mu}m thick layer of CH was added in some early shots to reduce the rate of expansion of the metallic coatings. In the extreme ultraviolet (euv) spectral region, we observed n=3 to n=2 emissions from Li-, He- and H-like ions from the Mg and Al coatings. …

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