What is High-Energy-Density Physics (HEDP)/
HEDP: Studying physics at very very high pressures (P > 1011 – 1015 Pa!)
Why do we care about HEDP and WDM?
- We care about them because they widely exist in nature:
- We care about them because they can now be created in laboratories:
- We care about them because they are routinely encountered in inertial confinement fusion (ICF) and HED experiments:
- Finally, we care about them because we do not fully understand the properties of matter at such exotic conditions:
- the classical plasma theory breaks down because it’s too cold!
- the traditional condense-matter theory fails because it’s too hot!
- strong-coupling and quantum degeneracy effects play crucial roles!!
