Time- and spectrally resolved characterisation of laser-driven hohlraum radiation

The measurement of the energy loss of heavy ions in plasma is one of the research activities of the plasma physics group at GSI. In addition to the recent achievements [1] in the directly heated set-up where a carbon foil is irradiated by either one or two high energy lasers, nhelix and PHELIX, and probed by the ion beam the indirectly heated set-up has also made significant progress. In this scheme a converter cavity, made of gold, converts the monochromatic laser light into thermal radiation at wavelengths of a few nanometres. This radiation has been characterised by an absolutely calibrated diode spectrometer as well as a XUV spectrometer [2].