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This paper describes a new method of compressing materials up to pressures of several megabars. A high-intensity magnetic field, obtained by magnetic flux compression, is used to compress a sample contained in a metallic tube. The compression of the sample is slow enough to avoid the generation of shock waves which allows the process to be isentropic. This paper describes the apparatus and several experiments with Lucite samples. Evidence that Lucite was isentropically compressed to a specific volume of about 0.25 is included. The pressure reached is estimated to be ~4 Mbar.

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The magnetic compression technique was used to measure the electrical properties of Al2O3 during isentropic compression. Details of the experiment are described. This compound remained an electrical insulator up to at least 500 GPa (5 Mbar). Comparisons are made between these results and other dynamic and static compression data.

Spatial separation of isotopes of barium in an atomic beam has been demonstrated, using radiation pressure of light from a tunable dye laser which resolved the unusually narrow isotopic hyperfine structure of the Ba (I) 5535.7-Å resonance line. Observations of the deflected monoisotopic beam indicate an average of 25 photons scattered per atom in the deflected beam.