Warm dense matter at the bench-top: Fs-laser-induced confined micro-explosion

We report the experimental evidence for creation of Warm Dense Matter (WDM) in ultrafast laser-induced micro-explosion inside a sapphire (Al₂O₃) crystal. We show that the WDM can be formed by a 100 nJ fs-pulse if the following conditions are satisfied: (1) the laser pulse is tightly focused to inside of the bulk of transparent material so the intensity at focus is two orders of magnitude higher than the optical breakdown threshold; (2) the pulse duration is shorter than the electron-ion energy exchange time; and, (3) the absorbed energy density is above the Young’s modulus for the material studied. The empty void created inside a sapphire crystal surrounded by a shell of compressed material provides the direct evidence of the maximum pressure above the Young’s modulus of sapphire (∼400 GPa). Synchrotron X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis of the shell revealed the presence of novel super-dense bcc-Al crystalline phase predicted at pressures above ∼380 GPa theoretically, which has never been observed experimentally before neither in nature in laboratory experiments. These results show that confined micro-explosion induced by tightly focussed fs-laser inside a transparent solid opens new routes for synthesis of new materials and study of WDM at a laboratory bench-top.     

Novel quantum steganography with large payload

In this paper, we propose a novel quantum steganography protocol based on quantum secure direct communication. By using entanglement swapping of Bell states, the protocol builds up hidden channel within the improved ping-pong protocol to transmit secret messages. Comparing with the previous quantum steganographies, its capacity of hidden channel is increased to four times, and the superposition channel can transmit more information than the original quantum channel. Imperceptibility of the hidden channel in this protocol is good, since its possibility of detection can be arbitrarily reduced by increasing the Bell state's number. Security of the secret messages is also proved to be reliable regardless of whether the hidden channel has been detected or not. In addition, our protocol has various applications in quantum communication.