X-ray phase-contrast imaging (XPCI) is a versatile technique with wide-ranging applications, particularly in the fields of biology and medicine. Where X-ray absorption radiography requires high density ratios for effective imaging, XPCI is more sensitive to the density gradients inside a material. In this letter, we apply XPCI to the study of laser-driven shockc waves. We used two laser beams from the Petawatt High-Energy Laser for Heavy Ion EXperiments (PHELIX) at GSI: one to launch a shock wave and the other to generate an X-ray source for XPCI. Our results suggest that this technique is suitable for the study of warm dense matter (WDM), inertial confinement fusion (ICF) and laboratory astrophysics.
@article{arxiv.1801.10049,
title = {X-ray phase-contrast imaging for laser-induced shock waves},
author = {L. Antonelli and F. Barbato and P. Neumayer and D. Mancelli and J. Trela and G. Zeaoruli and V. Bagnoud and C. Brabetz and B. Zielbauer and B. Borm and P. Bradford and N. Woolsey and D. Batani},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1801.10049},
year = {2019}
}