A study of isochoric heating of Al foil by laser-accelerated proton beam is presented. The proton source that induces the heating has been characterized in details. The heated sample conditions at different times during heating were inferred by coupling a timeand space-resolved interferometry diagnostic with a 1-dimensional hydrodynamic code (that includes proton stopping) that uses the previously characterized proton source as input. In this way, we have minimized the number of free parameters

more »

... in the modeling of the heating. We have shown that heating was isochoric and almost uniform along the target thickness with a maximum temperature of ~ 18 eV. Finally, a X-ray Near Edge Absorption Spectroscopy (XANES) diagnostic has been used to study the structural modification of the warm dense aluminum sample. We have observed a progressive loss, within ~ 10 ps, of lattice ordering within solid density Al samples as the temperature rises from 300 K to > 10 4 K.