Extraction of the Shock Adiabat of Metals from the Decay Characteristics of a Shock Wave in a Laser Experiment

A method has been proposed to extract the shock adiabat of metals, including the thermal component of the pressure, from the measured decay characteristics of a strong shock wave formed in a planar target irradiated by an intense laser pulse. The time of arrival of hydrodynamic perturbation initiated by the 70-ps laser pulse with an intensity of 1–100 TW/cm2 at the rear surface of foils with different thicknesses has been measured. The theory of decay of a plane shock wave in metals has been developed for the pressure range of 0.1–10 TPa. To verify theoretical conclusions, the numerical simulation of shock wave processes under study has been performed with wide-range equations of state of matter.