  Sapphire (single-crystal Al2O3) is a representative Earth material and is
used as a window and/or anvil in shock experiments. Pressure, for example, at
the core-mantle boundary is about 130 gigapascals (GPa). Defects induced by
100-GPa shock waves cause sapphire to become opaque, which precludes measuring
temperature with thermal radiance. We have measured wave profiles of sapphire
crystals with several crystallographic orientations at shock pressures of 16,
23, and 86 GPa. At 23 GPa plastic-shock rise times are generally quite long
(~100 ns) and their values depend sensitively on the direction of shock
propagation in the crystal lattice. The long rise times are probably caused by
the high strength of inter-atomic interactions in the ordered three-dimensional
sapphire lattice. Our wave profiles and recent theoretical and laser-driven
experimental results imply that sapphire disorders without significant shock
heating up to about 400 GPa, above which Al2O3 is amorphous and must heat. This
picture suggests that the characteristic shape of shock compression curves of
many Earth materials at 100 GPa pressures is caused by a combination of entropy
and temperature.
