Dmitrii S. Bespalov, U. Zastrau, Zhandos A. Moldabekov, Thomas Gawne, Tobias Dornheim, Moyassar Meshhal, Alexis Amouretti, Michał Andrzejewski, Karen Appel, Carsten Baehtz, E. Brambrink, Khachiwan Buakor, Carolina Camarda, David A. Chin, G. W. Collins, Céline Crépisson, Adrien Descamps, J. H. Eggert, L. B. Fletcher, Alessandro Forte, G. Gregori, M. Harmand, Oliver Humphries, Hauke Höppner, Jonas Kuhlke, William Lynn, J. Lütgert, M. Masruri, E. E. McBride, R. S. McWilliams, A. Mora, Jean-Paul Naedler, Paul Neumayer, C. A. J. Palmer, A. Pełka, Lea Pennacchioni, Calum Prestwood, Natalia Pukhareva, Chongbing Qu, Divyanshu Ranjan, R. Redmer, Michael Roper, Christoph J. Sahle, Samuel G. Schumacher, Jan‐Patrick Schwinkendorf, Melanie J. Sieber, Madison Singleton, Ethan Smith, Christian Sternemann, Thomas H. Stevens, Michael R. Stevenson, C. Strohm, Minxue Tang, M. Toncian, T. Toncian, T. Tschentscher, S. M. Vinko, J. S. Wark, Max Wilke, D. Kraus, Thomas R. Preston
Here, we describe the measurement of shock-compressed aluminium at 50 GPa with angle-resolved femtosecond x-ray Thomson scattering (XRTS) over a wide range of scattering wave vectors at the European X-Ray Free-Electron Laser.
The robust diagnosis of conditions generated in warm dense matter experiments remains a persistent challenge. Here, we describe the measurement of shock-compressed aluminium at 50 GPa with angle-resolved femtosecond x-ray Thomson scattering (XRTS) over a wide range of scattering wave vectors at the European X-Ray Free-Electron Laser. The measured plasmon dispersion and line shape show that the de facto standard approach for analyzing XRTS spectra, using uniform-electron-gas models, systematically overestimates the resonance energy by up to 8 eV. We present an approach using ab initio methods that agrees within the experimental uncertainty and demonstrates how accounting for shock-induced disorder in shock-compressed systems is critical for their understanding, providing evidence that ab initio treatments are required for reliable XRTS inference in warm dense aluminium.