Effect of non-Planckian spectrum on shock velocities and subsonic to transonic transition in mid-Z witness plate elements

In this work, we obtain the shock velocities in mid-Z elements, namely, Al, Ti, and Cu by performing radiation hydrodynamic simulations using constant radiation drives consisting of equilibrium Planckian distribution along with high-energy Gaussian profiles. The drive temperatures have been varied from 80 to 270 eV, and the fraction of total energy density due to Gaussian distribution (alpha) changes from 0 to 0.4. Though the shock velocity in all the three elements rise with the strength of the drive temperature, its variation with alpha is quite complicated. Using simulations, we have shown that rear surface expansion is not responsible for the observed variation in shock velocity with the fraction of hard x rays at various temperatures and explained it in terms of distribution of total extinction coefficient over the spectral form of incident drive source leading to change in albedos. The percentage variations in shock velocities are found to be commensurate with those in albedos as expected for x-ray driven ablation process. Accurate scaling laws relating the drive temperatures with the shock velocities and alpha have also been obtained. In Al, subsonic to transonic transition temperature is found to increase with alpha, whereas in Ti it is found to decrease. We have explained the variation in transition temperature in terms of Mach number. As this transition temperature in Cu is anticipated to be high due to its higher atomic number and density, we did not observe any transition up to the temperature (500 eV) considered in this paper.