High-Pressure Astro- and Planetary Physics
In the last years more and more exoplanets in a “habitable” distance to stars were discovered. Similar to our earth live would be possible due to the existence of liquid water and air to breath.
A lot of these planets are much bigger than earth and as classified as super-earths. Most probably the surface is somehow influence by the inner core. For better understanding it is necessary to explore the composition and structure of the inner core, the outer mantle and the surface. But even the inner of the earth cannot be explored directly. The deepest existing drilled hole is only 12 km and so still 6000 km away from the center of earth.
Therefore the condition are simulated in laboratory experiments. By the use of diamond anvil cell, the sample under investigation is in between two diamond and pressed together mechanically. By this pressures up to 3.7 Mega-bar (1 bar is atmospheric pressure) and 4500°C by infrared heating lasers are reached. X-Rays allow to investigate and identify the materials as well as to determinate fundamental physical properties.
Double-stage diamond anvil cell
Diamond Anvil Cell 3D Rendering
Foto: H.P. Liermann
Even by this technique it wasn’t possible to reach the pressure and temperature region of super earths. A further development is the so called double-stage diamond anvil cell, which reached pressures up to 10 Mbars. But at higher temperature the inner second stack of diamond anvil fails on a short time scale, in which no data collection can be performed. This problem can be overcome by the use of the European XFEL with its extreme short and very intense X-Rays flashes.
Dynamic diamond anvil cell
Another exiting topic is the investigation of neptun-like planets, which mainly consist of water (H2O and ice), Ammonia (NH3), Methane (CH3) and Hydrogen (H2), but got a solid rocklike core. Bu this component high pressure cannot be reached compared to solid samples, because water is under these conditions very reactive and destroy the diamond anvils. In so-called dynamic diamond anvil cell the pressure is increased so rapidly to 3 Mbars that water cannot diffuse into the diamonds and weaken them. But the measurement itself must be performed in an extremely small time window, was can be only fulfilled by the European XFEL
DiPOLE Experiments
Using energetic pulsed lasers, pressures and temperatures relevant to planetary interiors can be produced on timescales of a few nanoseconds. The fast nature of this technique allows for creating contamination-free and thus chemically isolated conditions to explore fundamental properties of matter at planetary interior conditions. To this end, HIBEF will employ a revolutionary drive laser system (DiPOLE provided by STFC) that can reach shot rates up to 10 Hz, which represents a thousand-fold increase in comparison to existing systems at XFEL facilities. Being able to quickly scan large areas of parameter space, this repetition rate will enable a new class of precision experiments. At the same time, certain in situ X-ray scattering techniques that require high data rates and were previously impossible are finally enabled and will result in unprecedented insights. This includes a first-principles measurement of the bulk temperature to benchmark equation of state models as well as a precise characterization of the electronic state of the extreme states of matter found deep inside planets.
Content from Sidebar
URL of this article
https://www.hzdr.de/db/Cms?pOid=50713
Links of the content
(1) | https://photon-science.desy.de/facilities/petra_iii/beamlines/p022_extreme_conditions_beamline/contact__staff/index_eng.html |