Figure 1
Experimental setup at the Ti:Sa laser system at the PALS facility. The setup was fit in a vacuum chamber with an attached smaller chamber for extending the electron beam path with an imaging plate placed 267 cm away from the gas nozzle. A set of Al and steel objects of various shapes and thicknesses was placed \(\sim 5\) cm before the imaging plates for a radiography measurement. A narrow band of electron energies was selected by an Al slit coupled with a dipole magnet and collimated by a set of ring magnetic lenses that conveyed the monochromized electron beam onto the IP. The ultra-fast interferometric measurement was carried out by the 1st harmonic split off component of the main laser pulse directly from the compressor with a known delay to the main pulse. Inserted figures show a comparison between density profiles of the plastic slit and Laval nozzles (a), and the photographs of the gas jet nozzles: (b) 3D printed plastic 500 \(\upmu\)m slit nozzle; (c) laval metallic nozzle with a razor blade to produce a steep density gradient on the rear side of the gas profile.
