Abstract:
The formation of a supersonic gas target for lasers that operate in the extreme ultraviolet
wavelengths is considered. The gas target is generated in the interaction zone of two opposite
supersonic gas jets. The emission properties of inert gas targets were investigated experimentally.
The distributions of the emission radiation intensity for argon, krypton and carbon dioxide were
obtained and the shapes of the emission zone were detected.
The experimental conditions were reproduced in numerical experiments. The mathematical
model of viscous compressible gas was used to model the gas dynamics of supersonic gas jets.
The problem was solved in a two-dimensional axisymmetric setting for argon. The obtained
distributions of the main gasdynamic quantities made it possible to detail the flow features and
estimate the size of the emission zone, as well as the density level corresponding to this zone. It
was demonstrated that the results of calculations qualitatively agree with the experimental data.
In addition, it was found that the density level of the emission region with the required extreme
ultraviolet intensity factor can be obtained by monitoring the total pressure.