Evaluation of Electrical Conductivity in Warm Dense State using Pulsed-power Discharges

With the aim of producing a well-defined warm dense state, we have demonstrated exploding wire discharge in water. The electrical conductivity of copper was measured directly and found to be lower than conductivities predicted by conventional theoretical models. To describe the experimental results, we proposed an empirical power law for the electrical conductivity at a fixed temperature. The experimental results indicate that the effective relaxation time for copper can be approximated by a power of -1.45 for the density for densities below log10 (ρ/ρs) ∼ -1.5.