Hamburg Photon Science Colloquium | Phase boundaries & ultrafast melting of matter in extreme conditions

by Siegfried Glenzer (Stanford University, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Menlo Park, CA, USA)

Friday 24 Jan 2020, 14:00 → 15:30 Europe/Berlin

CFEL SR I-III (Bldg. 99) (DESY, Hamburg)

Materials exposed to high pressures and temperatures show profound new properties and a rich variety of material structures. Laboratory experiments now reach pressures in the multi-TPa regime (1 TPa = 1012 Pa) exceeding those that exist at the center of earth and produce conditions found inside giant planets, brown and white dwarfs, and in the interiors of stars. To test density functional theory we have developed new ultrafast probing techniques that visualize phase boundaries and transition kinetics. These experiments constrain the electron-ion coupling rate, determine the Debye temperature, and reveal the melting sensitivity to nucleation seeds.