Initial design for an experimental investigation of strongly coupled plasma behavior in the Atlas facility

Summary form only given. Atlas is a high current (/spl sim/30 MA peak, with a current risetime /spl sim/4.5 /spl mu/sec), high energy (E/sub stored/=24 MJ, E/sub load/=3-6 MJ), pulsed power facility which is being constructed at Los Alamos National Laboratory with a scheduled completion date in the year 2000. When operational, this facility will provide a platform for experiments in high pressure shocks (>20 Mbar), adiabatic compression (/spl rho///spl rho//sub 0/>5, P>10 Mbar), high magnetic fields (/spl sim/2000 T), high strain and strain rates (/spl epsiv/>200%, d/spl epsiv//dt/spl sim/10/sup 4/ to 10/sup 6/ s/sup -1/), hydrodynamic instabilities of materials in turbulent regimes, magnetized target fusion, equation of state, and strongly coupled plasmas. For the strongly coupled plasma experiments, an auxiliary capacitor bank will be used to generate a moderate density (<0.1 solid), relatively cold (/spl sim/1 eV) plasma by ohmic heating of a conducting material of interest such as titanium. This target plasma will be compressed against a central column containing diagnostic instrumentation by a cylindrical conducting liner that is driven radially inward by current from the main Atlas capacitor bank. The plasma is predicted (by 1-D numerical simulations using the RAVEN and CRUNCH codes) to reach densities of /spl sim/1.1 times solid, achieve ion and electron temperatures of /spl sim/10 eV, and pressures of /spl sim/4-5 Mbar. This is a density/temperature regime which is expected to experience strong coupling (/spl Gamma//spl sim/14), but only partial degeneracy (/spl Theta//spl sim/0.7). X-ray radiography is planned for measurements of the material density at discrete times during the experiments; diamond Raman measurements are anticipated for determination of the pressure.