Soft x-ray photoabsorption spectra of photoionized CH4 and CO2 plasmas

In this work we report soft x-ray (SXR) photoabsorption measurements in neutral methane and carbon dioxide molecules and their corresponding photoionized plasmas. The SXR radiation was generated by a table-top laser produced plasma source based on a double stream gas puff target. At low SXR intensities only features related to neutral molecules are present in the absorption spectrum. On the other hand, as the radiation intensity increases, we observe new absorption features in the low photon energy side of the spectrum. In that case fragments such as neutral and ionized molecules, atoms and atomic ions are found to contribute to the absorption spectrum of the plasmas. To our knowledge these are the first measurements where this laser plasma based SXR source is used to both create and probe a molecular plasma. Emphasis is placed on identifying the fragment species and the corresponding transitions.