Recent measurements of warm dense samples heated directly by electrons

The use of relativistic electrons from conventional accelerators for the study of WDM is not common practice.  However, the heating mechanism is isochoric and the energy can be deposited into large volumes (> 20 mg and 2.5 x 10^-3 cm³) of high-Z materials.  Recent measurements have been made on 100-μm-thick samples ranging from ¹³Al to ⁷⁹Au.  A spatially resolved air-wedge shearing interferometer and shadowgraph diagnostic has been fielded to provide measurements of electron density (up to 8 x 10¹⁹ cm^-3) with ~50 μm precision.  This is a key diagnostic for understanding models of dense plasmas and is one of the tools used to benchmark our hydrodynamics model.  This diagnostic can also provide a rough measurement of velocity which can be compared to photonic Doppler velocimetry.  We are also developing diagnostics to provide detailed temperature measurements through the vapor dome.  A spectroscopic quality radiation transport model has been developed to interpret the radiation output we measure from these dense plasmas.  Example measurements on all of these fronts will be presented in comparison to some of our models.