X-ray radiographic imaging of hydrodynamic phenomena in radiation-driven materials---Shock propagation, material compression, and shear flow

One- and two-dimensional, time-resolved x-ray radiographic imaging at high photon energy (5--7 keV) is used to study shock propagation, material motion and compression, and the effects of shear flow in solid density samples which are driven by x-ray ablation with the Nova laser. By backlighting the samples with x rays and observing the increase in sample areal density due to shock compression, the trajectories of strong shocks (∼40 Mbars) in flight are directly measured in solid density plastic samples. Doping a section of the samples with high-Z material (Br) provides radiographic contrast, allowing a measurement of the shock-induced particle motion. Instability growth due to shear flow at an interface is investigated by imbedding a metal wire in a cylindrical plastic sample and launching a shock in the axial direction. Time-resolved radiographic measurements are made with either a slit-imager coupled to an x-ray streak camera or a pinhole camera coupled to a gated microchannel plate detector, providing ∼10 μm spatial and ∼100 ps temporal resolution