The Diamond Anvil Cell (DAC) is a high-pressure device allowing to compress micron-sized samples up to extreme conditions, mimicking planetary interiors.
This device is composed of two opposed diamonds compressing a sample placed in a compression chamber. This sample chamber consists is a hole made in a metallic gasket (in our experiments, this gasket is made of Rhenium). Pressure can be increased using a membrane deformed by gas, as in the following picture, or using screws. (…)

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The principle of laser shock compression is to focus a high-power laser (few ns pulse length) on target, where the plasma expansion, generated by the laser irradiation, will generate a shock wave inside the studied sample.
In order to constrain the pressure and temperature reached during the shock, two conventional diagnostics are usually installed, the VISAR (Velocity Interferometer System for Any Reflector) and the SOP (Streak Optical Pyrometer). These two time-resolved diagnostics (…)

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