Probing Matter at Gbar Pressures at the NIF

We describe a platform to measure the material properties, specifically the equation of state and electron temperature, at pressures of 100 Mbar to a Gbar at the National Ignition Facility (NIF). In these experiments we launch spherically convergent shock waves into solid CH, CD, or diamond samples using a hohlraum radiation drive, in an indirect drive laser geometry. X-ray radiography is applied to measure the shock speed and infer the mass density profile, enabling determination of the material pressure and Hugoniot equation of state. X-ray scattering is applied to measure the electron temperature through probing of the electron velocity distribution via Doppler broadening. Published by Elsevier B.V.