Gain Generation in the Critical Density Region of a TCE XRL

Significant reduction of the total pumping energy for a transient collisionally excited (TCE) x-ray laser (XRL) was made possible by using nonnormal main pulse pumping. In the attempt to scale to shorter XRL wavelengths, it is described here a theoretical investigation of the influence of the pumping pulse parameters on the gain generation in a Ni-like Ag x-ray laser (XRL). The possibility of gain generation closer to the critical density is shown by the EHYBRID code for a set of optimized parameters, corresponding to a possible setup at the PHELIX laser facility.