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We have employed fast electrons produced by intense laser illumination to isochorically heat thermal electrons in solid density carbon to temperatures of $\ensuremath{\sim}10\text{ }000\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{K}$. Using time-resolved x-ray diffraction, the temperature evolution of the lattice ions is obtained through the Debye-Waller effect, and this directly relates to the electron-ion equilibration rate. This is shown to be considerably lower than predicted from ideal plasma models. We attribute this to strong ion coupling screening the electron-ion interaction.

Summary form only given. Extreme states of matter are routinely created in the laboratory by the interaction of a high intensity laser with a solid. Such states are created in order to study scenarios relevant to astrophysical phenomena, inertial confinement fusion (ICF), equation of state (EOS) and opacity models. Solid density material with pressures above a megabar and temperatures of thousands of Kelvin is known as warm dense matter (WDM) and lies in the region of the phase space diagram between traditional solid state and plasma physics, Since expansion techniques are no longer applicable and neither the kinetic nor the potential energy can be treated perturbatively studying WDM represents a major challenge experimentally, theoretically and computationally.