Experimental Applications

Figure 1.3: Plasma phase diagram as displayed in Fig. 1.1 showing different areas of application of plasmas as suggested by Ebeling et al. (1996)

   

Figure 1.3 shows different areas of laboratory application of various types of plasmas, which are spread over a large temperature and density interval. For this work, the laser shock wave experiments by Da Silva (1997) and Collins et al. (1998) are most relevant since they were the first direct measurements of the hydrogen equation of state in the megabar regime. A detailed comparison will be performed in section . Earlier gas gun experiments by Nellis et al. (1983), Holmes et al. (1995), and Weir et al. (1996) did not reach temperatures over 5000$\,$K and therefore the comparison is only based on an extrapolation our data. The wire explosion experiments in Fig. 1.3 are only applicable to materials a wire can be made of.