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–Speaker–
Dr. Masakatsu Murakami
Institute of Laser Engineering, Osaka University

–Title–
Laser-Driven Ultrahigh Compression of Matter

–Abstract–
To compress matter to a density higher than a few thousands of times solid density, two different schemes, microbubble implosion (MBI) and multi-stacked shocks (MSS), are discussed, as fundamental physical approach rather than as energy application. In the MBI scheme, a micron-sized target with a hollow sphere (bubble) embedded inside is irradiated by PW-laser to produce MeV-electrons, which fill in the bubble. Ions on the inner surface of the bubble are then subject to a strong spherically symmetric electrostatic fields > 10^16 V/m to drive an implosion. Meanwhile, in the MSS scheme, a spherically uniform matter is compressed by multi-stacked shocks to asymptotically form a self-similar stacked-converging shock, which is different from the Guderley solution for a single converging shock wave. Scaling law for the compression ratio as a function of the number of stacked shocks and pressure jumps are also discussed.