Access Cover Stories - Making A Metal Out Of Hydrogen: The Livermore Laser


		The laser device at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory fills a five-story building. Lasers bombard a centimeter-sized cell containing solid deuterium to shock compress it to the extreme densities Ceperley's group is simulating. A "pusher" compresses the deuterium at the same time that X-rays measure the shock racing through the sample. By measuring the velocity, the researchers deduce hydrogen's pressure and density. The original laser facility built by the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) for studying compressed to high-density matter, is being replaced by a much larger billion dollar facility as part of DoE's ASCI (Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative) program. Ceperley's work is also partially funded by ASCI, which is interested in integrating atomic-level computer models with those of large-scale processes.

	`Help is available for researchers who want to ship data over the vBNS`
			Some of Ceperley's data were transported over the vBNS--the high-performance network service funded by the National Science Foundation--and computed at LLNL. Academic researchers who need help in configuring their data for transport over vBNS or in identifying bottlenecks can get assistance from the National Laboratory for Applied Network Research.