Theory and analysis of soft X-ray laser experiments

The atomic modeling of soft X-ray laser schemes presents a formidable challenge to the theorists - a challenge magnified by the recent successful experiments. A complex plasma environment with many ion species present must be simulated. Effects such as turbulence, time dependence, and radiation transport, which are very difficult to model accurately, may be important. We shall describe our efforts to model the recently demonstrated soft X-ray laser in collisionally pumped neon-like selenium, with emphasis on the ionization balance and excited state kinetics. The relative importance of various atomic processes, such as collisional excitation and dielectronic recombination, on the inversion kinetics will be demonstrated. We shall compare our models with experimental results and evaluate the success of this technique in predicting and analyzing the results of X-ray laser experiments.