Design of short pulse laser driven opacity experiments

Hot electrons created by short, intense laser pulses can heat solid density material to temperatures of order 500 eV. Inertial confinement can maintain such hot-dense plasmas for times of order 10 ps. This provides a platform for measurement of basic properties of hot dense matter, such as opacity and equation-of-state. In this paper we describe the role of computational modeling in the design and analysis of such opacity experiments. We describe a method to model the hot electron transport and deposition and the resulting target radiation-hydrodynamics. We present several design concepts to achieve uniform, long-lasting plasmas.