Optimization of x-ray emission from under-critical CH foam coated gold targets by laser irradiation

Under-critical CH foam coated gold targets benefit laser-to-x-ray emission because CH plasma inhibits gold plasma expansion, which leads to higher gold plasma density and temperature. Conversely, the CH foam partially absorbs the incident laser energy, which lowers laser absorption into the gold plasma. An analytical model is built to solve the laser collisional deposition fraction in the CH foam layer. The optimization of x-ray emission from under-critical CH foam coated gold targets by laser irradiation is obtained numerically with different CH foam densities and thicknesses. The plasma and x-ray emission properties are investigated. It is found that different CH thicknesses lead to different increase mechanisms for x-ray emission. The x-ray spectrum distributions show that most of the x-ray emission increases occur with photon energy less than 2000 eV.