Powerful x-ray laser creates solid-density plasma

Science Daily : Researchers at the US Department of Energy’s SLAC accelerator laboratory used rapid-fire laser pulses to flash-heat a tiny piece of aluminum foil to about 2 million °C. The experiments used SLAC’s Linac Coherent Light Source, which is a billion times brighter than any other x-ray source, to both create and probe the sample. “Making extremely hot, dense matter is important scientifically if we are ultimately to understand the conditions that exist inside stars and at the center of giant planets within our own solar system and beyond, " said Sam Vinko, a postdoctoral researcher at Oxford University and lead author of the group’s paper published in Nature.