The main aim of the study of thin target foil–laser interaction experiments is to understand the physics of hydrodynamics of the foil acceleration, which is highly relevant to inertial confinement fusion (ICF). This paper discusses a simple, inexpensive multiframe optical shadow-graphy diagnostics developed for dynamic imaging of high velocity laser-accelerated target foils of different thicknesses. The diagnostic has a spatial and temporal resolution of 12 𝜇m and 500 ps respectively in the measurements. The target velocity is in the range of $10^{6} - 10^{7}$ cm/s. Hydrodynamic efficiency of such targets was measured by energy balance experiments together with the measurement of kinetic energy of the laser-driven targets. Effect of target foil thickness on the hydrodynamics of aluminum foils was studied for determining the optimum conditions for obtaining a directed kinetic energy transfer of the accelerated foil. The diagnostics has also been successfully used to study ablatively accelerated targets of other novel materials.

Monochromatic X-ray backlighting has been employed with great success in various laser plasma experiments including inertial confinement fusion (ICF) research. However, implementation of a monochromatic backlighting system typically requires extremely high quality spherically bent crystals which are difficult to manufacture and are also expensive. In this paper, we present a quasimonochromatic X-ray backlighting system using flat thallium acid pthalate (TAP) crystal. The detailed characterization of the system is discussed. The X-ray backlighter spectral range is caliberated using Cu spectrum in the spectral range 7–9 Å (1.38–1.77 keV). Gold plasma produces continuous X-ray spectrum (M band) in this range. The spectral, spatial and temporal resolutions of the system measured are 30 mÅ, 50 $\mu$m and 1.5 ns respectively. The spectral width of the X-ray pulse is 2 Å ($\Delta E$ = 0.39 keV).