Quick Shot
Compressing Sodium into an Unexplored Pressure Regime
August 21, 2018
Danae Polsin, a graduate student in the High-Energy-Density Physics Experiments Group, assembles a powder x-ray diffraction image-plate (PXRDIP) target for a Laboratory Basic Science campaign day she was awarded this year. The objective is to compress sodium into an unexplored pressure regime (5 Mbar) to provide definitive experimental evidence for the electride state and to determine the high-pressure melting behavior in sodium using x-ray diffraction and optical reflectivity measurements. These experiments obtained the highest-pressure structural and electronic properties data for an alkali metal, a prototypical system used to guide theory for ultradense matter beyond the Thomas–Fermi model.