Unveiling the properties of Warm Dense Matter Cu by means of laser-driven shock compression coupled to time-resolved XAS

The Warm Dense Matter (WDM) state is an “exotic” state of matter which shows densities typical of solids and temperatures typical of plasmas. WDM is expected in the cores of giant planets (like Jupiter), in brown dwarfs, in small stars and in the core of Earth and in recently discovered extrasolar planets. WDM conditions are also produced in any laboratory experiment in which a solid is transformed to a plasma. A theoretical description of WDM is far from being achieved since conventional approximations that apply to solids or plasmas fail for such complex state and experimental data are scarce. We propose here to investigate the local ionic and electronic structure of WDM Cu up to 800 GPa by exploiting the new capabilities of the new High-Power laser facility (HPLF) at beamline ID24-ED