Radiative Shock Experiments on the Omega Laser

Experiments have been designed for the Omega laser at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics to observe the dynamics of a collapsed radiative shock. Previous experiments have observed the possible onset of instabilities in such structures, which the current work will attempt to investigate directly through dual-radiography imaging. The experiments consist of thin solid discs propelled into gas filled volumes, accelerated to above 100 km/s. In this regime, radiative transport will become significant, mimicking the shock structures found in a variety of astrophysical and high-energy-density systems in which the shocked layer undergoes spatial collapse due to the emission of large fractions of its thermal energy as radiation flux.