Indirectly driven colliding foil experiments at 0.75 Gbar

Summary form only given. The Nova laser is used to create a high-intensity radiation field inside a millimeter-scale hohlraum. The X-ray flux from the hohlraum is used to accelerate a thin gold foil through a void region, causing this flyer foil to collide with a stationary target foil, also of gold. Acceleration was accomplished by ablation of a CH disk attached to the flyer foil. Both foils were more than 500 /spl mu/m in diameter. The target foil was made in two thicknesses so that a shock transit time could be measured by observing the luminous shock breakout on the rear side with a streaked optical pyrometer. Several shots were made. Comparing the present results with established equations-of-state, it was determined that the dynamic pressure in the gold target foil was consistently about 0.75 Gbar. One-dimensional hydro simulations predict a shock pressure for this experiment to be near this figure. In addition, the target foil has been modified to measure the speed of the flyer foil.