Matter at extreme energy density: exotic solids to inertial fusion*

A new generation of extreme matter experiments is underway, recreating conditions that exist deep inside stars, sub-stellar objects (e.g., brown dwarfs), and planets, and creating dense plasma and revolutionary material states not previously imagined.  Exquisite pressure-temperature control can now bring atoms together a distance less than the deBroglie wavelength, to produce new quantum states of matter, and less than the Bohr radius, where core electron chemistry is plausible. Also accessible is the hot-dense plasma regime at the incipient stage of thermonuclear burn. In addition to creating these states, the first platforms to produce accurate-benchmarking data are allowing us to understand such extreme matter and opening a new window to the universe. Structural, mechanical, and transport data for solids at several TPa (1 TPa = 10 million atmospheres) are providing compositional insight for solar and extrasolar planets and new constraints for quantum-many-body theory. At higher temperatures, dense plasma data for several materials reveal new chemically complex phases well into the multi-TPa regime and undexpected ionization behavior into the 100 TPa regime. I hope to paint a picture showing how this new extreme matter frontier, over the next decade, will change the way we think about planets, (platforms for life throughout the universe), new materials and perhaps in some small way, inertial fusion.