European and US researchers have conductedpowerful laser pulses towards a small piece of aluminum foiluntil getting what is known as“hot dense matter”, a solid plasma that reached a temperature of about2 million degrees. The whole process took place in just a billionth of a second, as published this week inNature.
The experiments have been carried out with a super X-ray laser whose ultra-fast pulses are a billion times brighter than those achieved by any other of its kind so far. As reported by the SINC agency, it is the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) light source installed at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, a center operated by Stanford University for the US Department of Energy.
“The LCLS is a truly remarkable machine,” says Sam Vinko, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oxford (UK) and lead author of the paper. “Making dense matter extremely hot is important from a scientific point of view if it ultimately helps us understand the conditions that exist inside stars and in the centers of giant planets, both in our own Solar System and beyond. there”.
“Until now, scientists had managed to create this plasma from gases and study it with common lasers,” says another of the authors, Bob Nagler, from SLAC, “but there were no tools available that would make it possible to do the same with solid densities that do not they can be penetrated by conventional lasers. “
“The LCLS, with its ultra-short X-ray wavelength, is the first instrument that can penetrate a dense solid and create a uniform” patch “of plasma – in this case a cube one thousandth of a centimeter on a side – and try it at the same time, “says Nagler.
The resulting measurements will be incorporated into theories and computer simulations that try to explain the behavior of dense and hot matter. This could help researchersanalyze and recreate the nuclear fusion process that sets stars like the Sun in motion.
