Extreme states arise when a substance is exposed to powerful shock, detonation and electric explosive waves, concentrated laser radiation, electron and ion beams, during powerful chemical and nuclear explosions, hypersonic motion of bodies in dense planetary atmospheres, high-speed impact, and in many other situations characterized by extremely high pressures and temperatures. The study of matter under extreme conditions is one of the most urgent and intensively developing fundamental scientific disciplines, located at the intersection of plasma physics, nonlinear optics, condensed state, nuclear, atomic and molecular physics, and relativistic and magnetic hydrodynamics. In our country, research in the field of physics of high energy density and extreme states of matter is dynamically developing thanks to the active cooperation of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Rosatom State Atomic Energy Corporation.

People have always considered the search and development of new sources of energy to be among the priority areas of fundamental and applied research (Fortov in High energy density physics. FIZMATLIT, Moscow, 2013 []). In the first third of the twentieth century, research into the structure of the atom and atom nucleus was rapidly developing.

In Chap. 1, we recognized that the formation of shock waves and expansion waves is defined by the sign of the path derivative (∂2 V/∂p2)s indicating whether the sound velocity rises or falls down as the matter is heated

There is a great variety of manifestations of shock wave phenomena in various situations. Hydrodynamic manifestations of shock waves are currently most investigated manifestations of these complex and purely non-linear phenomena. It is the field where so far the most complete understanding of reasons for occurrence, formation, and evolution of the structure, dynamics, thermodynamics of shock wave processes has been achieved.

Powerful pulse lasers designed to carry out controlled thermonuclear fusion and simulate a nuclear explosion provide a unique opportunity to generate light pulses with an energy of the mega-joule range and a power of hundreds of terawatts and higher (Fortov in High energy density physics. FIZMATLIT, Moscow, 2013 []; Fortov in Extreme states of matter. High energy density physics, 2nd edn. Springer, Heidelberg, New York; London, 2016 []). When these pulses act upon condensed media, record local energy densities are achieved which at present cannot be obtained in laboratory experiments by any other methods available. This circumstance makes powerful laser systems a unique tool to generate powerful shock waves and study matter in a plasma state with extremely high energy densities.

This article is written on the basis of a report given 10 January 2003 at the International Scientific Conference, The Nuclear Age: Science and Society, dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the birth of Igor' Vasil'evich Kurchatov. It presents the results of work on the experimental study of substance properties under high pressure shock waves, briefly describes the use of super-strong magnetic fields for the study of substances at high pressure, presents the results of computational and theoretical research methods, and presents some results of studies of substance properties using liner systems in high-power pulsed electrophysical facilities (VNIIEF disk explosion-magnetic generators and USA Pegasus and ATLAS capacitor banks).

Construction of Thermodynamically Complete Equation of State of Matter Based on the Results of Shock-Wave Measurements. Three equations of gas dynamics (1.4–1.6, Chap. 1) associate four continuum flow parameters ρ, P, ε, u (Fortov in Equation of state of matter. From ideal gas to quark-gluon plasma. FIZMATLIT, Moscow, 2012 []; Fortov in Thermodynamics and equations of states for matter. From ideal gas to quark-gluon plasma. World Scientific, New York, London, Tokyo, 2016 []) as functions of coordinates and time. Introduction of the equation of state (EoS) E(p, ρ) obtained experimentally or from the statistical theory (Fortov in Equation of state of matter. From ideal gas to quark-gluon plasma. FIZMATLIT, Moscow, 2012 []; Fortov in Thermodynamics and equations of states for matter. From ideal gas to quark-gluon plasma. World Scientific, New York, London, Tokyo, 2016 []) closes the system of equations of gas dynamics and makes it possible to calculate the flow field for given initial conditions.

Our present study concerns the influence of the picosecond rise-time-pulsed electromagnetic field, and the impact of nanosecond pulsed pressure on the aggregation state of horseradish peroxidase (HRP) as a model enzyme. The influence of a 640 kV/m pulsed electromagnetic field with a pulse rise-time of ~200 ps on the activity and aggregation state of an enzyme is studied by the single-molecule atomic force microscopy (AFM) method. The influence of such a field is shown to lead to aggregation of the protein and to a decrease in its enzymatic activity. Moreover, the effect of a shock wave with a pressure front rise-time of 80 ns on the increase in the HRP aggregation is demonstrated. The results obtained herein can be of use in modeling the impact of electromagnetic and pressure pulses on enzymes and on whole living organisms. Our results are also important for taking into account the effect of pulsed fields on the body in the development of drugs, therapeutic procedures, and novel highly sensitive medical diagnosticums.

When studying electromagnetic waves, the object of interest is primarily the oscillatory process at various frequencies. However, oscillations do not exhaust the whole variety of electromagnetic processes in a wave. This chapter will focus on electromagnetic shock waves considered as solitary pulses of an electromagnetic field.

Almost all observed astrophysical phenomena and objects excite powerful shock waves during their inception, evolution and death.

The most important and quite efficient field of application of modern shock wave physics in science is high energy density physics [] where powerful shock waves simultaneously act as a means for both generation and diagnostics of extreme state of matter.

In a number of recent studies by the authors, a new physical phenomenon has been discovered and investigated in detail — the formation of a detonation wave during the condensation of highly supersaturated carbon vapor. The essence of the phenomenon is that an initiating shock wave propagating through an exothermic carbon compound (for example, carbon suboxide C 3 O 2 or acetylene C 2 H 2 ), as a result of its rapid dissociation, yields a highly supersaturated carbon vapor; the energy released during its condensation forms and maintains a detonation wave. This review describes in detail the results of experimental studies and their analysis based on the detailed kinetics and thermodynamics of the processes occurring and the one-dimensional Zeldovich–Neumann–Döring (ZND) theory of detonation. The potential to practically use the discovered phenomenon is discussed.

We study the impact of a few cycle extreme terahertz (THz) radiation (the field strength ETHz ∼1-15 MV/cm is well above the DC-field breakdown threshold) on a p-doped Si wafer. Pump-probe measurements of the second harmonic of a weak infrared probe were done at different THz field strengths. The second harmonic yield has an unusual temporal behavior and does not follow the common instantaneous response, ∝ETHz2. These findings were attributed to: (i) the lattice strain by the ponderomotive force of the extreme THz pulse at the maximal THz field strength below 6 MV/cm and (ii) the modulation of the THz field-induced impact ionization rate at the optical probe frequency (due to the modulation of the free carriers' drift kinetic energy from the probe field) at the THz field strength above 6-8 MV/cm.

Using the Ornstein–Zernike integral fluid equation for multi-component plasma, the dielectric properties and thermodynamical stability of dusty plasmas are studied. For the most non-ideal dust plasma subsystem, a transition to the one-component approximation is carried out. It is shown that the effective pseudopotential for determining the correlation functions in the selected subsystem should not include the contribution of this subsystem to the screening constant but also take into account the condition of total plasma quasineutrality. It is demonstrated that when the coupling parameter of the dust subsystem is smaller than unity, Γ00 < 1, the interaction potential between the charged plasma particles is fairly well described by the Debye potential with a full screening constant. For Γ00 > 1, the static dielectric function in the long wavelength domain becomes negative, and this domain expands when Γ00 increases. This leads to the appearance of attraction of particles with charges of the same sign and repulsion of particles with charges of the opposite sign. In this case, both the total pressure and the isothermal compressibility in the entire studied range of the coupling parameter Γ00 < 250 remain positive, but the isothermal compressibility of the dust subsystem becomes negative at Γ00 ≈ 2 within the studied range of variation of the plasma parameters. The sign of the derivative of the chemical potential with respect to the total number of dust particles, the positiveness of which is the third condition for the thermodynamic stability, is shown to coincide with the sign of the isothermal compressibility of the dust subsystem. Therefore, it is concluded that the equilibrium dusty plasma at Γ00 > 2 is thermodynamically unstable.

The detection of CA 125 protein in a solution using a silicon-on-insulator (SOI)-nanowire biosensor with n-type chip has been experimentally demonstrated. The surface of nanowires was modified by covalent immobilization of antibodies against CA 125 in order to provide the biospecificity of the target protein detection. We have demonstrated that the biosensor signal, which results from the biospecific interaction between CA 125 and the covalently immobilized antibodies, increases with the increase in the protein concentration. At that, the minimum concentration, at which the target protein was detectable with the SOI-nanowire biosensor, amounted to 1.5 × 10−16 M.

A complex plasma is a weakly ionized gas containing electrons, ions, neutral atoms and small macroscopic particles. Such a system allows experimental studies of various physical processes occurring in liquids and solids at the kinetic level. In this talk, we present experiments and simulations on a few interfacial phenomena in a phase-separated binary complex plasma.

Памяти Андрея Никоновича Старостина, Большов Л.А., Велихов Е.П., Ильгисонис В.И., Лагарьков А.Н., Минцев В.Б., Напартович А.П., Норман Г.Э., Петров О.Ф., Смирнов В.П., Сон Э.Е., Фортов В.Е., Черковец В.Е.