With the development of several novel heating sources, scientists can now heat a small sample isochorically above 10,000 K. Although matter at such an extreme state, known as warm dense matter, is commonly found in astrophysics (e.g., in planetary cores) as well as in high energy density physics experiments, its properties are not well understood and are difficult to predict theoretically. This is because the approximations made to describe condensed matter or high-temperature plasmas are invalid in this intermediate regime. A sufficiently large warm dense matter sample that is uniformly heated would be ideal for these studies, but has been unavailable to date. Here we have used a beam of quasi-monoenergetic aluminum ions to heat gold and diamond foils uniformly and isochorically. For the first time, we visualized directly the expanding warm dense gold and diamond with an optical streak camera. Furthermore, we present a new technique to determine the initial temperature of these heated samples from the measured expansion speeds of gold and diamond into vacuum. We anticipate the uniformly heated solid density target will allow for direct quantitative measurements of equation-of-state, conductivity, opacity, and stopping power of warm dense matter, benefiting plasma physics, astrophysics, and nuclear physics.

Laser-plasma interactions in the novel regime of relativistically induced transparency (RIT) have been harnessed to generate intense ion beams efficiently with average energies exceeding 10 MeV/nucleon (>100 MeV for protons) at “table-top” scales in experiments at the LANL Trident Laser. By further optimization of the laser and target, the RIT regime has been extended into a self-organized plasma mode. This mode yields an ion beam with much narrower energy spread while maintaining high ion energy and conversion efficiency. This mode involves self-generation of persistent high magnetic fields (∼104 T, according to particle-in-cell simulations of the experiments) at the rear-side of the plasma. These magnetic fields trap the laser-heated multi-MeV electrons, which generate a high localized electrostatic field (∼0.1 T V/m). After the laser exits the plasma, this electric field acts on a highly structured ion-beam distribution in phase space to reduce the energy spread, thus separating acceleration and energy-spread reduction. Thus, ion beams with narrow energy peaks at up to 18 MeV/nucleon are generated reproducibly with high efficiency (≈5%). The experimental demonstration has been done with 0.12 PW, high-contrast, 0.6 ps Gaussian 1.053 μm laser pulses irradiating planar foils up to 250 nm thick at 2–8 × 1020 W/cm2. These ion beams with co-propagating electrons have been used on Trident for uniform volumetric isochoric heating to generate and study warm-dense matter at high densities. These beam plasmas have been directed also at a thick Ta disk to generate a directed, intense point-like Bremsstrahlung source of photons peaked at ∼2 MeV and used it for point projection radiography of thick high density objects. In addition, prior work on the intense neutron beam driven by an intense deuterium beam generated in the RIT regime has been extended. Neutron spectral control by means of a flexible converter-disk design has been demonstrated, and the neutron beam has been used for point-projection imaging of thick objects. The plans and prospects for further improvements and applications are also discussed.

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Thermonuclear inertial confinement fusion plasmas confined by a heavy metal shell may be subject to the mixing of metal into the gas with a resulting degradation of fusion yield. Classical plasma diffusion driven by a number of gradients can provide a physical mechanism to produce atomic mix, possibly in concert with complex hydrodynamic structures and/or turbulence. This paper gives a derivation of the complete dissipative plasma hydrodynamics equations from kinetic theory, for a binary ionic mixture plasma consisting of electrons, e, a light (hydrogenic gas) ion species, i, and a heavy, high ZI plasma metal species, I. A single mean ionization state for the heavy metal, ZI, is assumed to be provided by some independent thermodynamic model of the heavy metal ZI=ZI(ni,nI,Te). The kinetic equations are solved by a generalized Chapman-Enskog expansion that assumes small Knudsen numbers for all species: NKe≡λe/L≪1,NKi≡λi/L≪1. The small electron to ion mass ratio, me/mi≪1, is utilized to account for electron-ion temperature separation, Te≠Ti, and to decouple the electron and ion transport coefficient calculations. This produces a well ordered perturbation theory for the electrons, resulting in the well known “Spitzer” problem of Spitzer and collaborators and solved independently by Braginskii. The formulation in this paper makes clear the inherent symmetry of the transport and gives an analytic solution for all values of the effective charge Zeff, including Zeff<1. The electron problem also determines the ambipolar electric field and the “thermal forces” on both ion species that are needed for the ion kinetic solution. The ion transport problem makes use of the small mass ratio between ion species, mi/mI≪1, to identify an “ion Spitzer problem” that is mathematically identical to that for the electrons but with different thermodynamic forces. The ionic scattering parameter, ΔI≡nIZI2/ni, replaces the Zeff of the electron problem, but has an extended domain, 0≤ΔI<∞, to cover all mixture fractions from the pure gas to the pure metal plasma. The extension of the Spitzer problem to include this extended domain is given in this work. The resulting transport equations for the binary gas-metal plasma mixture are complete and accurate through second order. All transport coefficients are provided in analytic form.

In a recent experiment on the Trident laser facility, a laser-driven beam of quasi-monoenergetic aluminum ions was used to heat solid gold and diamond foils isochorically to 5.5 eV and 1.7 eV, respectively. Here theoretical calculations are presented that suggest the gold and diamond were heated uniformly by these laser-driven ion beams. According to calculations and SESAME equation-of-state tables, laser-driven aluminum ion beams achievable on Trident, with a finite energy spread of ΔE/E~20%, are expected to heat the targets more uniformly than a beam of 140 MeV aluminum ions with zero energy spread. The robustness of the expected heating uniformity relative to the changes in the incident ion energy spectra is evaluated, and expected plasma temperatures of various target materials achievable with the current experimental platform are presented.