The paper describes the research on soft X-ray lasers with an active medium created using a gas puff target irradiated
with high-intensity laser pulses. The gas puff target in a form of an elongated gas sheet is produced by pulsed injection of
gas through a slit nozzle using a high-pressure electromagnetic valve. The method of generation of soft X-ray lasers using a
laser-irradiated gas puff target has been developed at the Institute of Optoelectronics. The collaborative experiments were
performed at various laser laboratories using high-intensity laser systems to irradiate the gas puff target and pump the X-ray
laser active medium. Results of these experiments are presented and discussed. Works aimed at increasing the efficiency of
X-ray lasers using a longitudinally irradiated gas puff target are also reviewed.
An overview of our recent developments, regarding “water-window” soft X-ray (SXR) microscopy based on a laser-plasma double stream gas puff target sources is presented. The work, presented herein, describes two approaches to SXR microscopy. The first one is a low spatial resolution, achromatic SXR microscopy, employing Wolter type-I objective. The second one is a nanometer spatial resolution SXR microscopy, with the use of a Fresnel zone plate objective, for imaging various objects with quasimonochromatic light, emitted from a double stream gas puff target based short wavelength source. The developments regarding both systems are presented, as well as the possible applications, for which the SXR microscope was already employed. Such compact, table-top size, laboratory type microscopy setups may be employed in the near future for complementary-like studies to other, often used, microscopy techniques.