This article reviews the progress in the development of practical table-top sources of soft x-ray laser radiation. The field is rapidly approaching the stage at which soft x-ray lasers sufficiently compact to fit onto a normal optical table will be routinely utilized in science and technology. This is the result of recent advances in the amplification of soft x-ray radiation in both compact las...

In the EXOSAT and ROSAT eras a significant number of polars were found to show a soft/hard X-ray ratio much greater than that expected from the standard accretion shock model. This was known as the ‘soft X-ray excess’. We have made an snapshot survey of polars using XMM-Newton and determined their soft/hard ratios. We find that less than one in five of systems show a significant soft X-ray exce...

We have demonstrated repetitive operation of a table-top lambda=13.9 nm Ni-like Ag soft-x-ray laser that generates laser pulses with 10 microJ energy. The soft-x-ray laser is enabled by a Ti:sapphire laser pumped by high-repetition-rate frequency-doubled high-energy Nd:glass slab amplifiers. Soft-x-ray laser operation at 2.5 Hz repetition rate resulted in 20 microwatt average power.

We have built a 36-pixel high-resolution superconducting tunnel junction (STJ) soft X-ray spectrometer for chemical analysis of dilute metals by fluorescence-detected X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) at the Advanced Light Source synchrotron. Soft X-ray absorption edges are preferred over traditional hard X-ray spectroscopy at the K-edges, since they have narrower natural linewidths and exhib...

The ROSAT All-Sky Survey observations of the complete hard X-ray selected Piccinotti AGN sample demonstrate that the soft X-ray spectra of almost none of the sample AGN can be simply represented by the power law extrapolated from the 2 10 keV range. A comparison of the soft X-ray spectra of the sample members with their medium energy continua measured with HEAO-1 and EXOSAT revealed that about ...

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 laser...

BACKGROUND The cervicothoracic junction (CTJ) is often inadequately visualized on lateral cervical X-rays due to anatomic variations and technical factors. AIMS The aim of this study was to investigate whether the swimmer's view and arm traction could enhance the image field on the standard lateral cervical (SLC) X-ray. METHODS The study was conducted in a university hospital in October 200...

This paper describes two statistical iterative reconstruction methods for X-ray CT. The rst method assumes a mono-energetic model for X-ray attenuation. We approximate the transmission Poisson likelihood by a quadratic cost function and exploit its convexity to derive a separable quadratic surrogate function that is easily minimized using parallelizable algorithms. Ordered subsets are used to a...

A 53-year-old female was suddenly hospitalized with acute left lateral abdominal pain. There was no history of trauma to the abdomen. She had received no abdominal operation. X-ray showed a soft tissue shadow in the left flank which displaced the bowel shadows medially. Plain abdominal CT showed a left retroperitoneal hematoma. Dynamic abdominal CT showed an outflow of medium from a blood vesse...