Thermal conduction study of warm dense aluminum by proton differential heating

A differential heating platform has been developed for thermal conduction study (Ping et al. PoP 2015), where a temperature gradient is induced and subsequent heat flow is probed by time-resolved diagnostics. An experiment using proton differential heating has been carried out at Titan laser for Au/Al targets. Two single-shot time-resolved diagnostics are employed, SOP (streaked optical pyrometry) for surface temperature and FDI (Fourier Domain Interferometry) for surface expansion. Hydrodynamic simulations show that after \textasciitilde 15ps, absorption in underdense plasma needs to be taken into account to correctly interpret SOP data. Comparison between simulations with different thermal conductivity models and a set of data with varying target thickness will be presented.