Extreme States оf Plasma on Earth and in Space

Plasma at extremely high pressures and temperatures plays an important role for under-standing the structure and evolution of astrophysical objects: neutron, quark and “strange” stars, black holes, pulsars, supernovas, magnetars, giant-planets, exoplanets, and for many energy techno-logies. The lecture discusses pulsed methods for generation of extremely high pressures in the dense nonideal plasma based on the compression and heating of matter in intense shock waves and waves of adiabatic expansion. To generate shocks in a megabar pressure range the cylindrical and spherical high explosive charges, intense laser and corpuscular beams, high velocity impacts, and soft X-rays were used. The obtained experimental data and the physical models of strongly coupled plasma were analyzed, such as: the metallization and dielectrization of strongly compressed plasma, high tempera-ture thermodynamic properties and plasma phase transitions, deformation of energy spectrum of compressed ions and atoms. The lecture presents physical properties of plasma and phase transforma-tions in a broad range of pressure up to 1030 bar – a few microseconds after the Big Bang, as well as an analysis of plasma properties in the astrophysical objects and their transformation. Based on the experimental data wide-range semi-empirical equations of state are presented. These semi-empirical models were used for multidimensional computer simulation of pulsed high-energy processes.

Föreläsningen ingår i en serie av årliga Alfvénföreläsningar som ges till minne av KTH-professorn Hannes Alfvén, vilken erhöll Nobelpriset i fysik 1970. Ekonomiskt stöds före-läsningen av Kungl. Vetenskapsakademien, KVA, genom dess Nobelkommitté för fysik.