Town Hall Meeting on Future Directions in Dynamic High Pressure Research

Dynamic compression research began in the U. S. sixty years ago. The motivator was national defense and compression was accomplished by a single shock wave. Since that time the world has changed substantially. New issues, in addition to military ones, threaten international stability in the twenty-first century. Isentropic and quasi-isentropic compression techniques have now been developed, which means temperature can be tuned independent of pressure between that on the Hugoniot and that on the isentrop. States can be achieved by dynamic compression that cannot be achieved by other methods. Dynamic and static compression with laser heating can now be used to measure different properties at the same conditions. The time is right for a national user facility in an unclassified University environment that achieves extreme conditions of high-energy density in condensed matter. Such facilities currently exist mainly in National Laboratories and should be developed in an open, unclassified University environment for fundamental and applied research. A user facility is for every one, national labs and universities. In fact, this is one way to facilitate involvement of people from national and military laboratories in basic research. The purpose of this town hall meeting is to solicit input from the community on what new things should be done in the future with dynamic compression. Anyone who would like to present a suggestion will have about five minutes to do so, depending on the number of people wishing time and the time available.