Dayne E. Fratanduono

The recent discovery of thousands of planets outside our Solar System raises fundamental questions about the variety of planetary types and their corresponding interior structures and dynamics. To better understand these objects, there is a strong need to constrain material properties at the extreme pressures found within planetary interiors1,2.

The high-pressure behavior of Fe alloys governs the interior structure and dynamics of super-Earths, rocky extrasolar planets that could be as much as 10 times more massive than Earth. In experiments reaching up to 1300 GPa, we combine laser-driven dynamic ramp compression with in situ x-ray diffraction to study the effect of composition on the crystal structure and density of Fe-Si alloys, a potential constituent of super-Earth cores.