Radiation cooling rates of a selenium plasma

The development of a scalable hydrogenic ionization model is described. The model utilizes correct energy and level structure data for each ionization stage and can be coupled self-consistently to a radiation transport calculation of the full nonhydrogenic X-ray spectrum. Thus it can be used to calculate accurately the effects of opacity on radiation emission rates that are of relevance to plasmas designed to produce recombination pumped population inversions due to rapid plasma cooling. The model is applied to a selenium plasma. It is found that, at ion densities where X-ray lasing has been observed, line emission from Δn≠0 transitions is a more important contributor to selenium's cooling rate than line emission from the Δn=0 transitions. Plasma opacity can also play an important role