Shock compression of deuterium to 900 Kbar

An experimental program to compress liquid deuterium with a two-stage gun is described. A xenon standard was used to check the adequacy of the EOS of the Dural container in the 7000 (1.7 Mbar) to 3000° K (0.0 Mbar) range. The agreement is reasonable. Further work on this standard is in progress to improve the accuracy. The target design parameters were checked with some sound speed measurements which confirm the liquid-like behavior of Dural at the temperatures, pressures, and strain rates of these experiments. The uncertainties of the results are analyzed and tabulated with the data. Comparison between the molecular and the metallic equations of state indicates a small volume change on metallization due to the high compressibility of the molecular phase vis-a-vis the metallic phase.