Episode 18: Superheating gold provides insight into extreme environments

In this podcast episode, MRS Bulletin’s Sophia Chen interviews Thomas White from the University of Nevada, Reno, about his research group’s work on superheating gold. By hitting the gold foil with 45 femtosecond blue laser pulses, the team heated the foil uniformly up to 14 times hotter than its melting point while maintaining the material’s crystal structure. To confirm the temperature, the group introduced a thermometry technique that derives the temperature based on the velocity of the atoms in the sample. By studying these forms of matter up close in the laboratory, White seeks to better understand what goes on inside planets, stars, and even extreme human-engineered environments, such as nuclear fusion reactors. Furthermore, these experimental results could open new theoretical investigations into superheating. This work was published in a recent issue of Nature.