Large amplitude fluxional behaviour of elemental calcium under high pressure

Experimental evidences are presented showing unusually large and highly anisotropic vibrations in the “simple cubic” (SC) unit cell adopted by calcium over a broad pressure ranging from 30–90 GPa and at temperature as low as 40 K. X-ray diffraction patterns show a preferential broadening of the (110) Bragg reflection indicating that the atomic displacements are not isotropic but restricted to the [110] plane. The unusual observation can be rationalized invoking a simple chemical perspective. As the result of pressure-induced s → d transition, Ca atoms situated in the octahedral environment of the simple cubic structure are subjected to Jahn-Teller distortions. First-principles molecular dynamics calculations confirm this suggestion and show that the distortion is of dynamical nature as the cubic unit cell undergoes large amplitude tetragonal fluctuations. The present results show that, even under extreme compression, the atomic configuration is highly fluxional as it constantly changes

Simple Metals at High Pressure

In this lecture we review high-pressure phase transition sequences exhibited by simple elements, looking at the examples of the main group I, II, IV, V, and VI elements. General trends are established by analyzing the changes in coordination number on compression. Experimentally found phase transitions and crystal structures are discussed with a brief description of the present theoretical picture.Comment: 22 pages, 4 figures, lecture notes for the lecture given at the Erice course on High-Pressure Crystallography in June 2009, Sicily, Ital

Pressure-induced amorphous-to-amorphous configuration change in Ca-Al metallic glasses

Pressure-induced amorphous-to-amorphous configuration changes in Ca-Al metallic glasses (MGs) were studied by performing in-situ room-temperature high-pressure x-ray diffraction up to about 40 GPa. Changes in compressibility at about 18 GPa, 15.5 GPa and 7.5 GPa during compression are detected in Ca80Al20, Ca72.7Al27.3, and Ca66.4Al33.6 MGs, respectively, whereas no clear change has been detected in the Ca50Al50 MG. The transfer of s electrons into d orbitals under pressure, reported for the pressure-induced phase transformations in pure polycrystalline Ca, is suggested to explain the observation of an amorphous-to-amorphous configuration change in this Ca-Al MG system. Results presented here show that the pressure induced amorphous-to-amorphous configuration is not limited to f electron-containing MGs

Thermodynamics and relativistic kinetic theory for q-generalized Bose-Einstein and Fermi-Dirac systems

The thermodynamics and covariant kinetic theory have been elaborately investigated in a non-extensive environment considering the non-extensive generalization of Bose-Einstein (BE) and Fermi-Dirac (FD) statistics. Starting with Tsallis' entropy formula, the fundamental principles of thermostatistics have been established for a grand canonical system having q-generalized BE/FD degrees of freedom. The many particle kinetic theory has been set up in terms of the relativistic transport equation with q-generalized Uehling-Uhlenbeck collision term. The conservation laws have been realized in terms of appropriate moments of the transport equation. The thermodynamic quantities have been obtained in weak non-extensive environment for a massive pion-nucleon and a massless quark-gluon system with non-zero baryon chemical potential. In order to get an estimate of the impact of non-extensivity on the system dynamics, the q-modified Debye mass and hence the q-modified effective coupling have been estimated for a quark-gluon system.by Sukanya Mitr