Production of warm dense water in the laboratory using intense ion beams at FAIR: Application to planetary physics

This paper presents two-dimensional hydrodynamic simulations of implosion of a water sample, which is enclosed in a cylindrical shell of tungsten that is driven by an intense uranium beam. The considered beam parameters match the characteristics of the beam which will be delivered by the heavy ion synchrotron, SIS100, at the Facility for Antiprotons and Ion Research (FAIR). An experimental scheme based on this concept, which is named LAPLAS, is an important part of the high energy density physics research program at FAIR. The simulations show that the LAPLAS implosion leads to a low-entropy compression of water, which generates core conditions of water-rich planets. The importance of this work is underscored by the fact that more than 30% of the discovered extrasolar planets are Neptune-like water-rich planets. To be able to construct a reliable physical model of the formation and evolution of these planets, it is important to have correct understanding of the equation of state of the exotic states of water that exist in the planetary interior. It is thus expected that the knowledge obtained from the LAPLAS experiments will be a very valuable contribution to the field of planetary physics. We show that x-ray radiographic imaging using a high-intensity laser-driven hard x-ray source would be a suitable diagnostic capable of delivering high-resolution images of the hydrodynamic evolution.