  We have employed the VULCAN laser facility to generate a laser plasma X-ray
source for use in photoionisation experiments. A nanosecond laser pulse with an
intensity of order ${10}^{15}$ W{cm}$^{-2}$ was used to irradiate thin Ag or Sn
foil targets coated onto a parylene substrate, and the L-shell emission in the
$3.3-4.4$ keV range was recorded for both the laser-irradiated and
non-irradiated sides. Both the experimental and simulation results show higher
laser to X-ray conversion yields for Ag compared with Sn, with our simulations
indicating yields approximately a factor of two higher than found in the
experiments. Although detailed angular data were not available experimentally,
the simulations indicate that the emission is quite isotropic on the
laser-irradiated side, but shows close to a cosine variation on the
non-irradiated side of the target as seen experimentally in previous work.
