The studies of laser ablation have lead to a new theory of nuclei,
endothermic nuclei generation, and quark-gluon plasmas. The surface of
ablated plasma expanding into vacuum after high power laser irradiation of
targets contains an electric double layer having the thickness of the
Debye length. This led to the discovery of surface tension in plasmas, and
led to the internal dynamic electric fields in all inhomogeneous plasmas.
The surface tension causes stabilization by short length surface wave
smoothing the expanding plasma plume and to stabilization against the
Rayleigh–Taylor instability. Generalizing this to the degenerate
electrons in a metal with the Fermi energy instead of the temperature
resulted in the first quantum theory of surface tension of metals in
agreement with measurements. Taking the Fermi energy in the Debye length
for nucleons results in a theory of nuclei with stable confinement of
protons and neutrons just at the well-known nuclear density, and the Debye
lengths equal to the Hofstadter decay of the nuclear surface. Increasing
the nuclear density by a factor of 10 leads to a change of the Fermi
energy into its relativistic branch where no surface energy is possible
and the particle mass is not defined, permitting the quark gluon plasma.
Expansion of this higher density at the big bang or in super-nova results
in nucleation and element generation. The Boltzmann equilibrium permits
the synthesis of nuclei even in the endothermic range, however with the
limit to about uranium. A relation for the magic numbers leads to a quark
structure of nuclear shells that can be understood as a duality property
of nuclei with respect to nucleons and quarks