New Opportunities for High Pressure and Temperature Experiments using an Energy Recovery Linac
Wendy Mao
Los Alamos National Laboratory
High pressure can induce dramatic changes in materials, and synchrotron radiation provides a powerful probe for investigation of this behavior. Recent development of the panoramic diamond anvil cell with x-ray transparent gaskets has extended the energy window and led to exciting advancements in high-pressure synchrotron x-ray spectroscopic techniques between 5-15 keV at high pressure and ambient temperature. However, these experiments are photon intensive and require significant x-ray exposure times which severely limit the ability to make measurements at simultaneous high temperature. It is extremely challenging to maintain temperature and sample configuration stability for measurements which take more than 30 minutes. A much brighter source like the proposed energy recovery linac would enable the collection of spectra via a suite of synchrotron x-ray spectroscopy methods (e.g. nuclear resonant inelastic x-ray scattering, x-ray raman spectroscopy, x-ray emission spectroscopy) at high pressure and high temperature in reasonable counting times. It would also facilitate measurements to much higher pressures on smaller samples and high resolution inelastic scattering experiments (e.g. phonon inelastic scattering measurements on Fe to core conditions). This opens the exciting possibility to measure key materials properties in situ at simultaneous high pressure-temperature for understanding behavior in the deep Earth.
