A line-imaging velocity interferometer technique for shock diagnostics without x-ray preheat limitation

Abstract

A study was conducted with a line-imaging velocity interferometer on sandwich targets at the Shen Guang-III prototype laser facility in China, with the goal of eliminating the preheat effect. A sandwich target structure was used to reduce the x-ray preheat limitation (radiation temperature ~170 eV) in a radiative drive shock experiment. With a thick ablator, the preheat effect appeared before the shock arrived at the window. After adding a shield layer of high-Z material on the ablator, x-rays which penetrated the ablator were so weak that the blank-out effect could not be measured. This experiment indicates that the sandwich target may provide a valuable technique in experiments such as equation of state and shock timing for inertial confinement fusion studies.