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 dedi- cated 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 en- ergy 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 ex- periment and the instrumentation to detect tunneling of pro- tons through the target as well as the expected results based on simulations.