08 February
Wolfson research fellow Sam Vinko and his group at the Department of Physics have recreated extreme conditions of temperature and pressure found in stars using the world's brightest X-ray source. Their research, reported last week in Nature, describes how, using X-ray free-electron lasers, the group of physicists created hot dense plasmas which mimic the conditions found in the interior of the Sun.
‘Making hot, dense, matter is important scientifically if we are to understand the sort of conditions that exist inside stars and at the centre of giant planets, within our own solar system and beyond,’ said Dr Sam Vinko, lead author of the paper. ‘The LCLS X-ray laser is a truly remarkable machine and the sort of hot plasma we created and observed has implications for many other fields of science LCLS is being used to study; for instance materials science and biological research.’
The research group described how they felt privileged to use the world’s first hard X-ray laser, which they referred to as ‘game-changing’ for much scientific research.
