Pulsed laser heating in DAC

Schematic of the double-sided pulsed laser heating setup installed at Bayreuth University.

Overview

Laser heating inside the diamond anvil cell (LHDAC) has numerous applications in mineral physics and high-pressure chemistry, physics, Earth and material sciences, being the major technique to study the properties of materials simultaneously at extreme temperatures and pressures. Although the first ever laser that was used to heat a sample in a diamond anvil cell was pulsed (by W. A. Bassett and L.-C. Ming back in 1972), it took decades before scientists started investigating the capabilities of pulsed laser heating in high-pressure science.

Our Research

George studies the effects of pulsed laser heating on materials at high pressure, such as their time-resolved temperature behavior and chemical reactivity. The double-sided pulsed laser heating system developed at Bayreuth University has been coupled with different experimental techniques at ESRF and DESY; synchrotron Mössbauer source, nuclear inelastic scattering, X-ray absorption spectroscopy and single-crystal X-ray diffraction.