Extreme Conditions
The knowledge of the structure of matter under compression is both of technological and fundamental interest. The science of matter at high density is now providing bases for fundamental understanding of atomic and molecular interactions in matter, giving new insights into the properties of materials at ambient conditions, and indicating the roots for the synthesis of the novel materials with exotic properties.
Although setting up a high pressure experiment is very difficult and time consuming, studies of pressure effect on properties of matter can now be performed using nearly all the experimental techniques of condensed-matter physics in temperature range from mK to thousands of K and/or at high magnetic fields. In our group we study electronic, magnetic and structural properties of matter under pressures up to 100 GPa (1 million atmospheres) by means of electrical conductivity and magnetic susceptibility measurements, high pressure Mössbauer spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy and synchrotron X-ray powder diffraction.