This paper describes a new method of compressing materials up to pressures of several megabars. A high-intensity magnetic field, obtained by magnetic flux compression, is used to compress a sample contained in a metallic tube. The compression of the sample is slow enough to avoid the generation of shock waves which allows the process to be isentropic. This paper describes the apparatus and several experiments with Lucite samples. Evidence that Lucite was isentropically compressed to a specific volume of about 0.25 is included. The pressure reached is estimated to be ~4 Mbar.

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We have found the local temporal shot-to-shot variation of the NIF high-energy laser system to be relatively constant (~3.4% to 4.2% of the mean fluence). We have developed a statistical model that predicts the maximum fluence distribution any particular location will be exposed to after N independent shots (the so-called max-of-N fluence distribution) using the measured shot-to-shot variance; this method allows for an estimate of maximum optics fluence exposure.

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The magnetic compression technique was used to measure the electrical properties of Al2O3 during isentropic compression. Details of the experiment are described. This compound remained an electrical insulator up to at least 500 GPa (5 Mbar). Comparisons are made between these results and other dynamic and static compression data.