Low Z opacities at high densities

Abstract

We present an experimental study devoted to measuring the opacity of bound–bound transitions in ultra-dense, hot, low Z plasmas, which are at the extreme limit for conditions of both emission spectroscopy and absorption spectroscopy. In this work, we develop an absorption spectroscopy experiment specially adapted to high-density diagnostics, using newly designed structured targets and an ultra-high resolution spectrograph. An aluminum plasma is chosen as the first candidate and the opacity of the He-like 1s2–1s2p (Heβ) and 1s2–1s3p (Heγ) transitions are measured.