Reflective Probing of the Electrical Conductivity of Hot Aluminum in the Solid, Liquid, and Plasma Phases

The physics of dense aluminum in transition between metallic and insulating states of the solid, liquid, and plasma phases is probed in thermally equilibrated, inertially confined, laser heated targets. Time resolved laser probes measure the reflectivity of thin aluminum layers embedded inside the target. The electrical conductivity is inferred from the reflectivity with a free-electron Drude conduction model. It is found to be sharply below liquid aluminum values and differs by at least an order of magnitude from current theoretical predictions.