The Colliding Planar Shocks platform to study warm dense matter at the National Ignition Facility*

We have developed an experimental platform to study warm dense matter at the National Ignition Facility that using colliding planar shocks to produce uniform plasma conditions and enable high-precision equation of state measurements [1]. The Colliding Planar Shocks (CPS) platform uses simultaneous x-ray Thomson scattering and x-ray radiography to measure the density, electron temperature, and ionization state at pressures approaching 100 Mbar. The CPS platform is designed to create a large volume of uniform plasma in the x-ray scattering volume, significantly improving the precision of the measurements necessary to test models for the equation of state and ionization potential depression in the warm dense matter regime. Here, we present the design of the CPS platform and compare hydrodynamic simulations to x-ray radiography and x-ray scattering data from initial experiments studying hydrocarbons.

 

[1] M. J. MacDonald et al., Phys. Plasmas 30, 062701 (2023).