A multiple Faraday cup assembly has been developed for measuring pulsed ion beam of a low energy plasma focus device. The Faraday cups operating in biased ion collector mode have nanosecond response and these have been used to determine the energy spectrum and flux of fast nitrogen ion beam emerging out of the pinched plasma column. The design feature that makes our Faraday cups unique is that they can register ion energy of higher kinetic value (∼hundreds of keV) as well as lower kinetic value (∼keV). It has been possible to register the ion energy upto a lower kinetic energy threshold of ∼5 keV which is a value much lower than that obtained in any previous works. The correlation of the ion beam flux with filling gas pressure is also reported. Angular distribution of ion measurement reveals a highly anisotropic emission indicating an ion dip at the electrode axis.

Multiple electron self-injection in laser wake-field acceleration is studied via fully relativistic two- and three-dimensional particle-in-cell simulation. The electron density modulation in the laser wake originating from oscillations of the laser pulse waist and relativistic effects can provoke the parametric resonance in the electron fluid momentum. This may result in repetitive trapping of plasma electrons in the acceleration phase of the laser wake: multiple electron self-injection. The maximal energy of the accelerated electrons depends strongly on the total charge of the injected electrons. A low energy spread, less than 1%, for an almost 1GeV energy electron beam with charge about 10pC is found numerically in the plasma channel irradiated by a 25TW laser pulse, while a 200TW laser pulse produces a few nC beam with only 150MeV energy. Essentially thermalization of accelerated electrons is also a result of charge loading.

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We have designed, fabricated and tested a soft x-ray device, which uses a capillary discharge to achieve neon-like argon lasing. The ceramic capillary has an inner diameter of 3 mm and a length of 150 mm. When operating the device with a current of 16 kA and dI/dt of 517.8 A ns −1 at gas pressure of 26.7 Pa, lasing has been confirmed. Multi-pulse laser output has also been observed with a slightly higher current of 17.5 kA, and this indicates that there exist several configurations suitable for the Ne-like Ar lasing during one pinch process. This is the first observation of multi-pulse laser output.

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