Recreating Planets and Stars using Giant Lasers

by Dr Marius Millot (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA)

Tuesday 10 Oct 2023, 13:00 → 14:00 Europe/Berlin

XHQ/E1.173 (European XFEL )

Giant Laser facilities such as the National Ignition Facility (NIF) in Livermore – the world’s most energetic laser system – provide enormous amounts of energy with exquisite control and full suites of advanced diagnostics which enable us to compress matter to the extreme conditions existing deep inside planets and stars.

We can now investigate how the extreme pressures and temperatures typical of planetary interiors and giant impacts modify the physical and chemical properties of constituent materials to provide robust foundations for integrated studies of the physical origin and geochemical evolution of planets and planetary systems. Using nanosecond diagnostics, we can document the atomic structure and the equation of state (EOS), reveal changes in the optical and electrical properties and explore new exotic states of dense matter. I will discuss recent experimental results including the discovery of superionic water ice which could dominate the interior of icy planets [1,2] and the demixing of hydrogen and helium at Jovian planet conditions [3].  
I will then briefly review recent progress in Inertial Confinement Fusion (ICF) research leading to the demonstration that NIF implosions can produce more fusion energy from Deuterium-Tritium fusion reactions than the laser energy that was used to drive the target—that is a target energy gain G>1 [4]. This milestone caps more than 50 years of research [5] and technological development at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and enables the realistic development of ICF approaches to Inertial Fusion Energy (IFE) to deliver nuclear fusion power to the grid in the next few decades.  

The versatility of the NIF can also be exploited to perform dynamic compression experiments to recreate planetary relevant extreme conditions in the laboratory.

 

Prepared by LLNL under Contract DE-AC52-07NA27344.  

[1] Millot, M., et al. Experimental evidence for superionic water ice using shock compression, Nat. Phys. 14, 297–302 (2018). [2] Millot, M., et al. Nanosecond X-ray diffraction of shock-compressed superionic water ice, Nature 569, 251–255 (2019). [3] Brygoo, S., et al. Evidence of hydrogen−helium immiscibility at Jupiter-interior conditions, Nature 593, 517–521 (2021).  [4]  https://www.energy.gov/articles/doe-national-laboratory-makes-history-achieving-fusion-ignition. [5] Zylstra, A., et al., Burning plasma achieved in inertial fusion, Nature 601 542-548 (2022).

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