High Energy Density Quantum Matter

G. W. Collins (U. of Rochester), R. J. Hemley (U. of Illinois at Chicago), S. Deemyad (U. of Utah), E. Zurek (Univ. of Buffalo), J. Eggert, A. Jenei (LLNL), N. Abdolrahim, R. Dias, D. Polsin, R. Rygg, S. Singh (U. of Rochester), N. Salke (U. of Illinois at Chicago), Malcolm McMahon (U. of Edinburgh)

Since the early days of quantum mechanics, the realm of quantum matter has been limited to low temperatures, restricting the breadth of quantum phenomena exploited and explored. A diverse team of scientists, students, and postdocs has set a course to unlock a new realm of quantum matter at extreme energy density.  Funded by the Office of Fusion Energy Science within the Department of Energy and building on their recent discoveries, this ‘Extreme Quantum Team’ will tune the energy density of matter into a high-energy-density (HED) quantum regime to understand and realize extremes of quantum matter behavior, properties, and phenomena. Quantum behavior emerges when the distance for quantum blurring (the de Broglie wavelength), for particles like atoms, exceeds the distance between atoms in matter.  Historically, scientists have used the fact that this quantum blurring distance increases with decreasing temperature, to discover and explore a wide variety of emergent behavior (superconductivity, superfluidity, etc) at low temperatures.  This project however will take advantage of new developments in high-energy-density science that enable the controlled manipulation of pressure, temperature, and composition (P-T-X) opening the way to revolutionary quantum states of matter. For example, this team will develop and use computationally inspired compression experiments to tune the distance between atoms to this quantum blurring distance, to unlock new quantum behavior at unprecedentedly high temperatures, transferring quantum phenomena to the macro scale, and opening the potential for hot superconductors, transparent aluminum, insulating plasma and more.