Ion-beam-driven Planetary Physics Research at FAIR

In a recent paper, detailed numerical simulations of a proposed experimental scheme named LAPLAS, which stands for Laboratory Planetary Sciences, were reported. These simulations showed that employing intense ion beams as a driver, one can implode samples of Fe to high energy density (HED) states that are predicted to exist in the interiors of the Earth and more massive extrasolar rocky planets, the super-Earths. The driver parameters were chosen to match those of the ion beam that will be available at the Future Facility for Antiprotons and Ion Research (FAIR) in a few years. This work has been thoroughly extended by carrying out more simulations while systematically varying the beam and the target parameters in order to examine the stability and the robustness of the LAPLAS scheme. The simulations suggest that the results are rather insensitive to significant variations in the beam and the target parameters, which is a very good sign for the success of the experiment. Moreover, two different equation of state (EOS) models, including a semi-empirical model and the SESAME EOS data, respectively, have been used for Fe. Good agreement has been found between the two sets of results.