Laser-based Dynamic compression

Even though shock compression is a powerful tool to study extreme conditions relevant for planetary cores, the achieved P-T conditions remain along the Hugoniot. This important limitation pushed the dynamic compression community to further develop alternative compression techniques. A significant step ahead has been recently done on isentropic compressing, multi-shocks or pre-compressed samples, now opening studies at lower temperatures and up to 10 Mbar pressure (e.g., Amadou, 2012). However, many questions are still raised by the dynamic compression techniques (Luo2003, Boehler1993, Smith2007), usually in connection with the characteristic time scales involved in laser compression. Considerable effort is currently underway to combine these measures with X-ray diagnostics (Coppari2013, Harmand2014, Ping et al., 2013) to have an insight on the structural behaviour of matter at extreme conditions and during the short time scales involved (ps, ns). Those alternative techniques require a high control of the target design (composition, density, crystallographic phases, multi-layer targets characterisation) and of the laser compression techniques as well as a good knowledge of the material response under extreme loading. Our ERC project aims at bringing significant know-how on those specific points.

© LULI

LULI 2000. Experimental chamber of the high energy laser facility