Review of electrical resistivity measurements of dense aluminum

Summary form only given. We have completed an analysis of recent experiments that were done at Los Alamos and other laboratories that measured the electrical resistivity of aluminum at conditions where the aluminum is in a dense, strongly coupled, plasma state. A plasma is strongly coupled when the parameter /spl Gamma/, defined as the ratio of the average potential energy between ions to their temperature, is >1. These plasmas occur naturally in the interiors of giant planets and brown dwarfs and on the surfaces of white dwarfs and neutron stars. They also occur in laboratory systems of high energy density whenever solid material is rapidly heated to plasma conditions, such as laser heated plasmas and ohmically heated metals. The properties of these plasmas cannot be treated using standard plasma theory, which treats the correlations among particles as a small effect. Many theories have been developed which predict the properties of such plasmas, but their is little data from experiments with which to compare. These experiments provide data for a comprehensive comparison of resistivity data with dense plasma theories. The experiments provide data under a wide range of conditions, from temperatures <1 eV up to 25 eV and densities from nearly solid to <1% solid. In all cases /spl Gamma/>1 for these experiments. In this presentation, we will present a comparison of the data with various theoretical predictions. From this comparison we will draw some conclusions concerning under what conditions some of the theories are adequate and other conditions where none of the theories appear to be accurate. Possible reasons for this continued discrepancy will be discussed.