UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY PROJECT TITLE: TUNING DYNAMIC-COMPRESSION EXPERIMENTS: FROM QUANTUM CRYSTALS TO PLANETS PROJECT OBJECTIVES COLLECT BASIC DATA FUNDAMENTAL FOR UNDERSTANDING THE CONSTITUTION, EVOLUTION AND ORIGINS OF PLANETS, AS WELL AS CHARACTERIZING PREDICTED QUANTUM STATES OF MATTER AT HIGH DENSITIES. TRAINING OF GRADUATE STUDENTS AND YOUNG RESEARCHERS IN THE FIELD OF HIGH ENERGY DENSITY SCIENCE. MILESTONES – TECHNIQUE DEVELOPMENT FOR ULTRA–COMPRESSED HUGONIOT AND MULTI-SHOCKED STATES FOR HYDROGEN AND HELIUM: SINGLE AND MULTI-SHOCK MEASUREMENTS ON SAMPLES PRE-COMPRESSED TO PRESSURES EXCEEDING 20-40 GPA. – TECHNIQUE DEVELOPMENT FOR CRYOGENIC MEASUREMENTS ON LOW-ENTROPY (ROTATIONAL QUANTUM STATE J = 0) FLUID OR CRYSTALLINE STATES OF HYDROGEN. INITIAL EXPERIMENTS ON H2 (CATALYZED) AND HD SAMPLES SUITABLY COOLED TO AS MUCH AS 5-10 K BELOW OUR CURRENT SAMPLES (20 K, NO CONSTRAIN ON J). – FURTHER DOCUMENTATION OF THE HE-H2 UNMIXING TRANSITION BY OBTAINING DATA FOR A BROADER RANGE OF COMPOSITIONS AND PRE-COMPRESSIONS, AS WELL AS WITH MULTI-SHOCK OF PRE-COMPRESSED SAMPLES.