Transmission grating spectrograph with on-line recording of XUV soft X-ray spectra from laser produced plasmas

The setting up and on-line operation of a transmission grating spectrograph in the XUV soft X-ray region is described. The detector was a microchannel plate–image intensifier combination, and the output of the image intensifier was coupled to a CCD camera–frame grabber system through an imaging lens. The spectrograph could be operated in the 5–20 Å range with 0.6 Å spectral resolution and in the 5–50 Å range with ∼1 Å resolution, respectively. The high sensitivity of the detector enables single shot operation, which is useful for several laser plasma interaction studies.