Production and diagnostics of dense matter

High energy lasers are a unique tool to create high pressure states above 10 Mbar at ns time scales, which allow to study material properties under these extreme conditions. These conditions are, for example, comparable with planetary cores, where material properties play an important role for the properties and evolution of a planet. The rapid compression allows also to study dynamic effects of phase transitions as compression times are comparable to relaxation times. We will present recent results of laser compression of iron reaching conditions of so called "super-Earth" cores. A description of the compression schemes as well as present and future diagnostics is presented.