Publications Details

Argon equation of state data to 1 TPa: Shock compression experiments and simulations

Root, Seth; Mccoy, Chad A.; Cochrane, Kyle; Carpenter, John H.; Lemke, Raymond W.; Shulenburger, Luke N.; Mattsson, Thomas; Sterne, Philip A.

Argon is the most abundant noble gas on Earth and its noble, atomic fluid nature makes it an excellent candidate for comparison of experiment and theory at extreme conditions. We performed a combined computational and experimental study on shock compressed cryogenic liquid argon. Using Sandia's Z machine, we shock compressed liquid argon to 600 GPa and reshock states up to 950 GPa. Laser shock experiments at the Omega Laser facility extend the principal Hugoniot to 1000 GPa and provided temperature data along the principal Hugoniot. The plate impact experiments and laser shock experiments used well-characterized impedance matching standards and demonstrate consistent results between the two platforms over a common range. Density functional theory based molecular dynamics simulations provided additional data on the Hugoniot to 600 GPa. The combined experimental data and simulation results provide constraints on the development of new equation of state models at extreme conditions.