The paper presents a cylindrical diode with a rod anode for repetitive pulsed intense X-ray sources. The diode uses a massive anode of diameter 1 cm, thus increasing the lifetime of the energy converter. The diode gap is preliminary filled with ions produced by cathode flare in a vacuum discharge, allowing electron beam pinching at a voltage of <200 kV. In the mode of pinching, the diode is an efficient source of high-power X rays. At a distance of 20 cm from the X-ray source, the radiation dose per pulse is 0.4 R at a peak power of 7 × 106 R/s. The full-width at half-maximum of the radiation pulse is 40 ns. The power in the diode is 1.8 GW at a beam current of 10 kA and exceeds the maximum power of the generator operating onto a matched load with constant resistance.

High-resolution K-shell spectra of a plasma created by superintense laser irradiation of micron-sized Ar clusters have been measured with an intensity above 1019 W/cm2 and a pulse duration of 30 fs. The total photon flux of 2 × 108 photons/pulse was achieved for Heα1 resonant line of Ar (λ = 3.9491 Å, 3.14 keV). In parallel with X-ray measurements, energy distributions of emitted ions have been measured. The multiply charged ions with kinetic energies up to 800 keV were observed. It is found that hot electrons produced by high contrast laser pulses allow the isochoric heating of clusters and shift the ion balance toward the higher charge states, which enhances both the X-ray line yield of the He-like argon ion and the ion kinetic energy.