Inertial Fusion Sciences and Applications 2005
J.-C. Gauthier, et al.
J. Phys. IV France 133 (2006) 1085-1088
DOI: 10.1051/jp4:2006133220

Potential of CERN large hadron collider to study high-energy-density states in matter

N.A. Tahir¹, A. Shutov², I.V. Lomonosov², V. Gryaznov², A.R. Piriz³, D.H.H. Hoffmann^{1, 4}, V.E. Fortov², V. Kain⁵ and R. Schmidt<sup>2

1</sup>  Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung, 64291 Darmstadt, Germany
²  Institute for Problems of Chemical Physics, Chernogolovka, Russia
³  E.T.S.I. Industrials, Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, 1307 Ciudad Real, Spain
⁴  Institut für Kernphysik, Technische Universität Darmstadt, 64289 Darmstadt, Germany
⁵  CERN-AB, 1211 Geneva, Switzerland

Abstract
Numerical simulations have shown that the powerful 7 TeV proton beams that will be generated at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will be a very efficient tool to create samples of High-Energy-Density (HED) matter including strongly coupled plasmas. These plasmas are abundant in nature as they exist in starts, brown dwarfs and giant planets that makes study of such systems very important. Recent experiments carried out at CERN to study the material damage caused by 450 GeV proton beams from Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) to high-Z targets have shown that this beam which has an energy 100 times less than the LHC beams causes melting of the material. This provides some confirmation of our theoretical predictions concerning the LHC beams.

© EDP Sciences 2006