Hot Matter from High-Power Lasers

There are as many types of hot matter and plasmas as technical methods to produce them: Discharges, radiation induced plasmas, pressure generated plasmas, plasmas from dynamic processes, and from particle beams. The widest class of plasmas, concerning their spatial extension as well as their variety, long living, and stable confinement, is found in the cosmos [1]. A special class of plasmas on earth is represented by conducting solids. There the high Fermi pressure of the electrons is neutralized by the Coulomb attraction of the ions, in contrast to the large scale cosmic and laboratory confinement by magnetic fields, gravitation, or the inertia of matter.