High-Pressure Research Using X-rays enerated by Accelerator Sources

Simon Clark , Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Advances in measurement techniques and methodologies largely drive advances in our understanding of the natural world. This is particularly true for the case of high-pressure research. Advances in pressure-cell technologies have allowed us to move from the kilobar to Megabar regimes with simultaneous temperatures rising from a few hundred Kelvin to many thousand, opening up new fields of research in the fields of physics, chemistry, and materials science. In parallel with this, developments in x-ray sources have seen us moving from identifying simple phases and measuring lattice parameters in determining atomic structure and elastic properties of materials high-pressure and temperatures. In this talk, I will outline the progress we have made over the last twenty years of development of high-pressure x-ray studies; starting with examples from second-generation synchrotron sources and moving on to describe the state of the art high-pressure diamond anvil cell with laser heating facility at the third generation Advanced Light Source. Examples of using these facilities will be in the context of our understanding of the core mantle boundary. I will also describe our plans for using the next generation of accelerator-based light sources, free-electron lasers (for example the Linac Coherent Light Source being built at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center) for studies of materials under shock compression.

The P/T Colloquium is
typically held each
Thursday, 3:45–5:00 PM.
Refreshments are served
at 3:15 PM.