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/cm$^2$ 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.