Crystallography matters ... more!

As part of the lecture series to celebrate the International Year of Crystallography at FCT-NOVA, on November 12, Dr Sakura Pascarelli (ESRF, France) will give a talk entitled "Investigating Extreme States of Matter by X-ray Absorption Spectroscopy".

Here's a summary of her lecture: The last decades have witnessed an unprecedented surge in the study of matter and materials at extreme values of pressure, temperature, and magnetic field. The fundamental importance of this research stems from the fact that such extreme conditions can deeply modify chemical bonds and induce myriad changes in materials. Many breakthroughs have been achieved at synchrotrons worldwide, in fields ranging from Earth and planetary sciences to fundamental physics, chemistry and materials research, and even in the life sciences where questions on life and biological function under extreme conditions have been studied. The European Synchrotron Radiation Facility is presently undergoing an important upgrade program with eight new beamlines becoming operational by 2016. One of the first upgrade beamlines, UPBL11, is designed to provide state-of-the-art conditions to perform time resolved and extreme conditions x-ray absorption spectroscopy. In this talk I will illustrate a few examples of ongoing research on UPBL11. Examples cover studies of chemical reactions that occur in the interior of planets, the investigation of pressure induced collapse of ferromagnetism, and the structure and magnetism of antiferromagnets under high magnetic fields. Target experiments for the future include kinetic studies of chemical reactions at high pressure and temperature, and investigation of extreme states of matter that can be maintained only over very short periods of time. Preliminary data will be shown from the first attempts to probe the electronic and local structure in melts at high pressures and in laser-shocked matter.

Read the short biographies of all speakers of the FCT-NOVA lecture series at http://xtal.dq.fct.unl.pt/iycr2014/Speakers.html