Extreme water state produced by underwater wire-array electrical explosion

The generation of an extreme water state (130 GPa, 5000 K, and 3.4 g/cm(3)) which is characterized as dense plasma at the axis of a converging shock wave is reported. A 4 kJ pulse generator was used to explode a 40 Cu-wire array, generating a cylindrical shock wave. The measured shock wave trajectory and energy deposited into the water flow were used in hydrodynamic simulations coupled with the equation of state to determine the water parameters. The temperature estimated using the emission data of water in the vicinity of the implosion axis agrees with the simulation results, indicating shock wave symmetry in such extreme conditions.