Isochoric heating of solids by laser-accelerated protons: Experimental characterization and self-consistent hydrodynamic modeling

A study of isochoric heating of Al foil by laser-accelerated proton beam is presented, coupling self-consistent hydrodynamic simulations (including proton stopping) with experimental measurements. The proton source that induces the heating has been characterized experimentally and the induced heating has been inferred through critical density expansion velocity measurement. The low-energy part of the proton spectrum that plays the dominant part in the heating process has been studied in detail. The experimental results are compared with the results of 1-dimensional hydrodynamic simulations that use as input the measured proton source and good agreement between the two is found using the SESAME EOS. (authors)