Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 January 2002
A study of angular distribution of X-ray line radiation emitted from a laser-produced plasma is presented. Plasma was produced by irradiating a planar magnesium target using single laser pulses of 6 J, 4.5 ns (FWHM) from an Nd:glass laser system. Angular distribution of X-ray emission in the spectral range of 7–10 Å was recorded using a single X-ray crystal spectrograph. X-ray emission intensity for different resonance lines is observed to decrease up to an angle of ∼45° with respect to target normal, followed by a significant increase at higher angles. The observed departure of angular distribution from a monotonically decreasing behavior is broadly in agreement with the calculations of the escape factor of the radiation at different angles from a thick disk-shaped plasma using a spectroscopic code RATION.