Planar shock wave generated by uniform irradiation from two overlapped partially coherent laser beams

Two partially coherent light laser beams, coupled with a random phase plate were focused at an angle of 31.7° with the centers of the beams offset by 250 μm. This produced a relatively uniform (7% root-mean-square) irradiated spot of 400 μm. When this technique was used to produce a shock wave in a copper wedge, a relatively uniform shock of 2 ns duration was produced. In addition, a multilayered flyer plate was accelerated using this method to an average speed of 21 km/s and produced a planar impact on a glass window. It is anticipated that this technique can be used to produce important multi-Mbar equation of state information in future experiments.