Livermore Scientists Dedicate New Research Facility As Part 0f High Pressure Collaborative Access Team
ARGONNE, Ill. — Physicists from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory today will introduce the newest research facility at the Advanced Photon Source, one of the most advanced light sources in the world, as part of their role in the High Pressure Collaborative Access Team (HP-CAT).
HP-CAT is made up of Livermore’s High Pressure Physics Group, the High Pressure Science and Engineering Center at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, the Carnegie Institution of Washington’s Geophysical Laboratory and Argonne National Laboratory.
The $10 million project is partially funded through the Department of Energy’s Office of Defense Programs and Office of Science.
The new research facility contains beam lines of unprecedented high energy, intensity and resolution and will be used to study the structure and behavior of materials under high pressure and varying temperatures.
"At Livermore, we’ve invested in this beamline because it is an enabling capability for our Stockpile Stewardship Program," said Bill Goldstein, associate director for the LLNL’s Physics and Advanced Technologies Directorate. "The highly intense, high-energy X-ray beam will allow us to characterize the structure of high explosives, and low-symmetry phases of plutonium, with unprecedented precision."
The new research facility will advance high-pressure science by allowing new types of experiments to be performed including measuring the dynamics of electrons, atoms and nuclei and detailed studies of complex materials as functions of pressure, temperature and time. In addition, the new facility will allow a new-generation of high-pressure devices such as large-volume diamond-anvil cells to be used. The ultimate goal is to advance high-pressure synchrotron radiation research and set up a world-leading high-pressure research center accessible to the scientific community at-large.
High-pressure material research is critical to the Laboratory’s Stockpile Stewardship Program, the Inertial Confinement Fusion Program, and to the study of new materials and energy sources. Understanding matter at high pressure is a major area of research in the Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative (ASCI) and for the National Ignition Facility.
HP-CAT will help the Laboratory achieve its missions by ensuring excellence in science and technology, providing accurate stockpile materials data and recruiting and retaining science and technology leaders.
The collaboration will allow Livermore scientists to conduct shock and static experiments that provide complementary material data to develop and validate new theory and large-scale integrated weapon’s experiments.
"A fast time-resolved X-ray diffraction such as the one at Advanced Photon Source is a critical enabling technology for NIF, gas-guns JASPER and the Z-machine," said Choong-Shik Yoo, LLNL’s high pressure group leader.
Founded in 1952, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is a national security laboratory, with a mission to ensure national security and apply science and technology to the important issues of our time. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is managed by the University of California for the U.S. Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration.
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