Collaborative Access Teams at APS allow various organizations to pool their resources to advance basic research more effectively. Ho-Kwang Mao of Carnegie's Geophysical Laboratory is director of the team. It allows scientists to see what happens to materials at the atomic level. The first experiments are planned for year three of the project. New physical and chemical phenomena will be observed at the new facility as materials undergo transitions from one state to another under different pressure and temperature scenarios.
Many unexpected transitions are likely.
Scientists will be able to mimic conditions in planetary interiors like those of Earth and the gas giant Jupiter. Other experiments could lead to an entirely new class of synthetic materials and usher in a new era for condensed-matter physics, which is important to the field of high technology.