Response of a tungsten powder target to an incident high energy proton beam

The experiment described in this paper is the first study of the response of a static tungsten powder sample to an impinging high energy proton beam pulse. The experiment was carried out at the HiRadMat facility at CERN. Observations include high speed videos of a proton beam induced perturbation of the powder sample as well as data from a laser Doppler vibrometer measuring the oscillations of the powder container. A comparison with a previous analogous experiment which studied a proton beam interaction with mercury is made.