We demonstrate that combining the laser heating (LH) system in a diamond anvil cell (DAC) with a tandem acousto-optical tunable filter (TAOTF) allows measurement of the temperature distribution (TD) under infrared (IR, 1064 nm) LH of a specimen under high pressure in a DAC. The main component of the system is a TAOTF synchronized with a video camera. The system allows TD mapping within a temperature range of approximately 1000–2000 K on the surface of a laser-heated object (Fe plates) at high pressure in a DAC with a spatial resolution 2 µm by fitting the actual signal to Planck’s equation at each point.

We report the observation of a phase transition of diamond to denser than diamond carbon phase composed from 2 to 3 fullerene-type shells of onions. Raman spectra indicate the fullerene-type of the onions shells. The onions phase is a stable phase in a diamond instability zone of a phase diagram of carbon at pressure 70 GPa and temperature 2400 K. A mixture of diamond and Ni powders was heated by a laser beam under pressure in a diamond anvil cell. Both direct and catalytic diamond to onions transitions were observed during heating. The catalytic transformation includes the following steps. Melting of Ni during the laser heating at pressure 70 GPa, a ‘diamond solution’ (a transfer of carbon atoms from diamond) in liquid Ni and the formation of an equilibrium carbon phase from the supersaturated solution upon cooling. The catalytic process is a reverse one relative to the catalytic synthesis of diamond in a diamond stability zone at pressure around 6 GPa. The main result of our study is the presence of fullerene-type structures in the phase diagram of carbon in the region of diamond instability under high sub-Mbar pressure and wide range of temperatures.

In this paper, we demonstrate that combining a laser heating (LH) system with a tandem acousto-optical tunable filter (TAOTF) allows us to measure the temperature distribution (TD) across a laser-heated microscopic specimen. Spectral image processing is based on one-dimensional (1D) non-linear least squares fitting of the Planck radiation function. It is applied for determining the temperature T at each point (x, y) of the specimen surface. It is shown that spectral image processing using the 1D non-linear least squares fitting allows measurement of the TD of the laser-heated microscopic specimen with higher precision and stability than those of the conventional linear least-squares fitting of the Wien approximation of Planck’s law.

Thermal conductivities of planetary materials under extreme conditions are important input parameters for modeling planetary dynamics such as accretion, geodynamo and magnetic field evolution, plate tectonics, volcanism-related processes etc. However, direct experimental measurements of thermal conductivity at extreme conditions remain challenging and controversial. Here we propose a new technique of thermal conductivity measurement in laser-heated diamond anvil cell (LH-DAC) based on radial temperature distribution around laser focal spot, mapped by imaging tandem acousto-optical tunable filter (TAOTF). The new technique provides much more information about heat fluxes in the laser-heated sample than existing static heating setups, and does not require dynamic numerical modeling using heat capacities in contrast to dynamic pulsed heating setups. In the test experiment, thermal conductivity of γ-Fe at conditions relevant to cores of terrestrial planets was measured.

Recently it has been shown that it is possible to measure the two-dimensional distribution of the surface temperature of microscopic specimens. The main component of the system is a tandem imaging acousto-optical tunable filter synchronized with a video camera. In this report, we demonstrate that combining the laser heating system with a tandem imaging acousto-optical tunable filter allows measurement of the temperature distribution under laser heating of the platinum plates as well as a visualization of the infrared laser beam, that is widely used for laser heating in diamond anvil cells.