Semi-Empirical Approach to Pulsed Wire Discharges in Water as a Method for Warm Dense Matter Studies

Abstract

Hydrodynamic behaviors accompanied by a pulsed thin wire discharge in water have been observed via a fast framing/streak camera, together with the basic electric characteristics. Results show that the discharge plasma is tamped and stabilized by the surrounding water and it evolves through a warm dense state with high degree of symmetry and reproducibility up to a 2 μs discharge time. Numerical simulations show that the shock wave trajectories driven in the water are strongly dependent on equation of state (EOS) models of the plasma. Those results indicate that a semiempirical fitting of the shock traces to the experimental observation is a useful method for studying the EOS models of matter in a warm dense state.