Reproducible, rugged, and inexpensive photocathode x-ray diode.

The photoemissive cathode type of x-ray diode (XRD) is popular for measuring time and spectrally resolved output of pulsed power experiments. Vitreous carbon XRDs currently used on the Sandia National Laboratories Z-machine were designed in the early 1980s and use materials and processes no longer available. Additionally cathodes used in the high x-ray flux and dirty vacuum environment of a machine such as Z suffer from response changes requiring recalibration. In searching for a suitable replacement cathode, we discovered very high purity vitreous-carbon planchets are commercially available for use as biological substrates in scanning electron microscope (SEM) work. After simplifying the photocathode mounting to use commercially available components, we constructed a set of 20 XRDs using SEM planchets that were then calibrated at the National Synchrotron Light Source at Brookhaven National Laboratory. We present comparisons of the reproducibility and absolute calibrations between the current vitreous-carbon XRDs and our new design.

Radiation flux and spectral analysis of the multi-temperature Z dynamic hohlraum.

Experiments performed at the Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) Z-machine, located in Albuquerque, New Mexico produce hot (approximately 220 eV) plasmas. X-ray emission from the plasma is used to drive radiation flow experiments. Our standard plasma diagnostic suite consists of x-ray diodes (XRDs), silicon photodiodes, and nickel thin film bolometers. Small diagnostic holes allow us to view the hot plasma from the side, top axial anode side, and bottom axial cathode side. Computer software has been written to process the raw data to calculate data quality, fold in detector spectral response and experiment geometry for emitted flux, calculate a multidetector spectral unfold, and yield an equivalent time-dependent Planckian temperature profile. Spectral unfolds of our XRD data generally yield a Planckian-like spectrum. In our presentation we will compare our diagnostic techniques, analysis, and results to more accurately characterize spectral unfolds in order to establish better drive conditions for our experiments.