An Experiment at HiRadMat: Irradiation of high-Z Materials

Calculations of the impact of dense high intensity proton beams into material has been presented in several papers [1,2,3]. This paper presents the plans for an experiment to validate the theoretical results. The experiment will be performed at the High Radiation to Materials (HiRadMat) facility at the CERN-SPS. The HiRadMat facility is dedicated to shock beam impact experiments. It allows testing of accelerator components, in particular those of LHC, to the impact of high-intensity pulsed beams. This facility will allow to study High Energy Density physics as the energy density will be high enough to create strongly coupled plasma in the core of high-Z materials (copper, tungsten) and to produce strong enough pressure waves to create a density depletion channel along the beam axis (tunneling effect) [4,5]. The paper introduces the layout of the experiment and the instrumentation to detect tunneling of protons through the target as well as the expected results based on simulations.