Using Dante, radiography, and spectral temperature diagnostics to constrain simulations of the COAX radiative shock experiment

In a growing number of radiative shock tube experiments, a laser irradiates a hohlraum to drive a radiation wave into a foam tube and subsequently develop a radiative shock. Simulating these experiments requires careful modeling choices and approximations, and comparing simulations to diagnostic data leads to an often parameterized model that can be exploited to constrain key physics in the experiment. The experimental platform COAX is designed to constrain numerical models of a such a radiative shock by employing radiography for spatial and shock information, Dante diagnostics for characterizing the hohlraum drive, and a novel spectral diagnostic designed to probe the temperature gradient of the wave. Using parameterized 2D simulations with a hohlraum-laser modeling package, we analyze the drive, shock position and curvature, and temperature via synthetic spectra of the radiative shock and discuss how we propagate uncertainties to our physical understanding of the experiment.