LMCE laboratory presentation

The Laboratoire Matière en Conditions Extrêmes (LMCE) is a laboratory based at CEA-DAM Ile-de-France (CEA-DIF), in Bruyères-le-Châtel. Bringing together academic activities carried out at CEA-DIF in various fields of « Science and Engineering », it has been affiliated with Paris-Saclay University (UPS) under the CEA-UPS agreement.

The research topics addressed at the LMCE aim at better understanding the physical phenomena involved in the ultra-fast conditioning of matter under extreme conditions. They thus cover a very vast domain of states of matter, from solid to plasma, which is articulated around three major axes of physics:

  • Condensed matter physics,
  • Fluid physics, and more specifically plasma physics,
  • Nuclear physics.

The LMCE is attached to the Graduate Schools « Physics » and « [Engineering and Systems Sciences]((https://www.universite-paris-saclay.fr/graduate-schools/graduate-school-sciences-de-lingenierie-et-des-systemes-sis) » of the Paris-Saclay University. Fully committed to the mission of training through research, the LMCE is affiliated to several doctoral schools of the UniParis-Saclay University:

The LMCE welcomes Master trainees, PhD students and post-doctoral fellows, as well as students in work-study programs. The laboratory counts about a hundred permanent engineers-researchers, and about forty PhD students and post-doctoral fellows.

The specificity of the LMCE being to combine for each theme physical modelling, experiments and numerical simulation on supercomputers, it benefits from multiple means allowing to carry out these missions.

In particular, the engineers-researchers have access to the various supercomputers of the CEA/DAM allowing them to develop models and calculation codes as well as large-scale production calculations on exascale computers. For this purpose, the laboratory develops or most often co-develops physics codes, taking care to adapt them to the new supercomputer architectures. For instance, one can mention :

  • the multi-scale chain of material codes whose three pillars are the electronic structure code ABINIT, the classical molecular dynamics code EXASTAMP and the CODDEX code at the microstructure scale,
  • the laser matter interaction codes ESTHER and CALDER,
  • and the chain of nuclear physics codes ranging from the description of nuclear interactions (HFB3, ISAAC, …) to nuclear reaction codes such as the TALYS code with the final objective of evaluating nuclear data.

In parallel, experiments play a significant role in the research carried out at LMCE. Multiple state-of-the-art experimental means are present in the laboratory, including specific devices for the study of matter in domains still to be explored:

  • experimental means for the study of very high pressures in statics, such as the Diamond Anvil Cell (CED) and light benches allowing to optimize our projection capacity on IR (synchrotrons, high power lasers, X-Fel),
  • a Pulsed Power Facility (EPP) allowing the study of Warm Dense Matter,
  • a specific laser device, the Transportable Laser Shock Generator (GCLT) allowing to study the behavior of materials under shock,
  • experimental devices for the study of nuclear physics, and in particular innovative nuclear fission diagnostics developed in the lab for collaborative experimental programs on national (GANIL) or international research instruments,
  • two electrostatic particle accelerators and a linear electron accelerator.