Plasma-kinetics perspective on a collisional Ni-like x-ray laser pumped by a single profiled laser pulse

Some aspects of plasma kinetics in a Ni-like Ag soft x-ray laser have been analyzed, starting from the real shape of the pump laser pulse measured with a third-order correlator. The role for pump energy reduction of a complex pump pulse structure at a low intensity level has been identified, and the modeling results on the gain lifetime correspond well with the length of the output x-ray pulse measured in the experiment.