Laboratory photo-ionized plasma David Yanuka Introduction Photo-ionized plasmas are common in astrophysical environments Typically near strong sources of X-ray Absorption spectra from these plasmas contain wealth of information What can be learned from the recorded spectra? Material Distance Velocity Degree of ionization Temperature Pressure Density Disadvantages of studying astrophysical plasmas Complex interpretation models which include unknown parameters: Geometry of the system Gas composition Density distribution Photon energy distribution of the driving X-ray flux Multi element plasmas overlapping of spectral lines Difficulties in study of laboratory plasmas In astrophysical photo-ionized plasmas the radiation field is more dominant than collisions In laboratory plasmas collisions are dominant To overcome this need strong X-ray radiation source Z facility in Sandia produces 1-2 MJ of X-ray energy with a pulse duration of ~6 ns Z pinch Experimental setup Current of 20 MA Power of ~135 TW BB radiation ~200 eV Duration of ~7.5 ns Height of 2 cm Diameter of 0.2 cm Gas-cell at 6 cm Assumed temperature of eV Opacity Bound-bound opacity Line shape Photon energy resolved transmission Finding best fit to experimental results Ionization parameter Finding temperature Summary A method of extracting the charge state of plasma from absorption spectra has been introduced Simulation was used to find best match of charge distribution to color and brightness temperatures Temperature was used to calculate the ionization parameter