High-pressure melting curve of hydrogen

The melting curve of hydrogen was computed for pressures up to 200 GPa, using molecular dynamics. The inter- and intramolecular interactions were described by the reactive force field (ReaxFF) model. The model describes the pressure-volume equation of state solid hydrogen in good agreement with experiment up to pressures over 150 GPa, however the corresponding equation of state for liquid deviates considerably from density functional theory calculations. Due to this, the computed melting curve, although shares most of the known features, yields considerably lower melting temperatures compared to extrapolations of the available diamond anvil cell data. This failure of the ReaxFF model, which can reproduce many physical and chemical properties (including chemical reactions in hydrocarbons) of solid hydrogen, hints at an important change in the mechanism of interaction of hydrogen molecules in the liquid state

Low viscosity of the Earth’s inner core

The Earth’s solid inner core is a highly attenuating medium. It consists mainly of iron. The high attenuation of sound wave propagation in the inner core is at odds with the widely accepted paradigm of hexagonal close-packed phase stability under inner core conditions, because sound waves propagate through the hexagonal iron without energy dissipation. Here we show by first-principles molecular dynamics that the body-centered cubic phase of iron, recently demonstrated to be thermodynamically stable under the inner core conditions, is considerably less elastic than the hexagonal phase. Being a crystalline phase, the bodycentered cubic phase of iron possesses the viscosity close to that of a liquid iron. The high attenuation of sound in the inner core is due to the unique diffusion characteristic of the body-centered cubic phase. The low viscosity of iron in the inner core enables the convection and resolves a number of controversies

Polymorphic nature of iron and degree of lattice preferred orientation beneath the Earth's inner core boundary

Deciphering the polymorphic nature and the degree of iron lattice-preferred orientation in the Earth's inner core holds a key to understanding the present status and evolution of the inner core. A multiphase lattice-preferred orientation pattern is obtained for the top 350 km of the inner core by means of the ab initio based Candy Wrapper Velocity Model coupled to a Monte Carlo phase discrimination scheme. The achieved geographic distribution of lattice alignment is characterized by two regions of freezing, namely within South America and the Western Central Pacific, that exhibit an uncommon high degree of lattice orientation. In contrast, widespread regions of melting of relatively weak lattice ordering permeate the rest of the inner core. The obtained multiphase lattice-preferred orientation pattern is in line with mantle-constrained geodynamo simulations and allows to setup an ad hoc mineral physics scenario for the complex Earth's inner core. It is found that the cubic phase of iron is the dominating iron polymorph in the outermost part of the inner core

Ab initio molecular dynamics study of fluid H2O-CO2 mixture in broad pressure-temperature range

Properties of H2O and CO2 fluid and their mixtures under extreme pressures and temperatures are poorly known yet critically important in a number of applications. Several hundreds of first-principles molecular dynamics (FPMD) runs have been performed to obtain the pressure-volume-temperature (P-V-T) data on supercritical H2O, CO2, and H2O-CO2 mixtures. The pressure-temperature (P-T) range are from 0.5 GPa to 104 GPa (48.5 GPa for CO2) and from 600 K to 4000 K. Based on these data, we evaluate several existing equations of state (EOS) for the fluid H2O, CO2, and H2O-CO2 mixture. The results show that the EOS for H2O from Belonoshko et al. [Geochim. Cosmochim. Acta 55, 381–387; Geochim. Cosmochim. Acta 55, 3191–3208; Geochim. Cosmochim. Acta 56, 3611–3626; Comput. Geosci. 18, 1267–1269] not only can be used in the studied P-T range but also is accurate enough to be used for prediction of P-V-T data. In addition, IAPWS-95 EOS for H2O shows excellent extrapolation behavior beyond 1.0 GPa and 1273 K. However, for the case of CO2, none of the existing EOS produces data in agreement with the FPMD results. We created new EOS for CO2. The precision of the new EOS is tested by comparison to the calculated P-V-T data, fugacity coefficient of the CO2 fluid derived from high P-T experimental data as well as to the (very scarce) experimental volumetric data in the high P-T range. On the basis of our FPMD data we created a new EOS for H2O-CO2 mixture. The new EOS for the mixture is in reasonable agreement with experimental data

Elastic properties of body-centered cubic iron in Earths inner core

The solid Earths inner core (IC) is a sphere with a radius of about 1300 km in the center of the Earth. The information about the IC comes mainly from seismic studies. The composition of the IC is obtained by matching the seismic data and properties of candidate phases subjected to high pressure (P) and temperature (T). The close match between the density of the IC and iron suggests that the main constituent of the IC is iron. However, the stable phase of iron is still a subject of debate. One such iron phase, the body-centered cubic phase (bcc), is dynamically unstable at pressures of the IC (330-364 GPa) and low T but gets stabilized at high T characteristic of the IC (5000-7000 K). So far, ab initio molecular dynamics (AIMD) studies attempted to compute the bcc elastic properties for a small (order of 102) number of atoms. The mechanism of the bcc stabilization cannot be enabled in such cells and that has led to erroneous results. Here we apply AIMD to compute elastic moduli and sound velocities of the Fe bcc phase for a 2000 Fe atom computational cell, which is a cell of unprecedented size for ab initio calculations of iron. Unlike in previous ab initio calculations, both the longitudinal and the shear sound velocities of the Fe bcc phase closely match the properties of the IC material at P = 360 GPa and T = 6600 K, likely the PT conditions in the IC. The calculated density of the bcc iron at these PT conditions is just 3% higher than the density of the IC material according to the Preliminary Earth Model. This suggests that the widely assumed amount of light elements in the IC may need a reconsideration. The anisotropy of the bcc phase is an exact match to the most recent seismic studies.Funding Agencies|Swedish Research Council (VR) [2019-05551, 2017-03744, 2019-06063]; Olle Engkvist Byggmastare Foundation; Swedish Government Strategic Research Area in Materials Science on Functional Materials at Linkoping University (Faculty Grant SFO-Mat-LiU) [2009-00971]; Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation; ERC [854843]; Swedish Research Council [2016-07213]</p

Melting of a polycrystalline material

Calculating the melting temperature of a solid with a known model of interaction between atoms is nowadays a comparatively simple task. However, when one simulates a single crystal by molecular dynamics method, it does not normally melt at the melting temperature. Instead, one has to significantly overheat it. Yet, a real material melts at the melting point. Here we investigate the impact of the defects and the grain boundaries on melting. We demonstrate that defects and grain boundaries have similar impact and make it possible to simulate melting in close vicinity of thermodynamic melting temperature. We also show that the Z method might be non-applicable in discriminating a stable submelting phase

Imaging the top of the Earth’s inner core: a present‑day flow model

Despite considerable progress in seismology, mineral physics, geodynamics, paleomagnetism, and mathematical geophysics, Earth’s inner core structure and evolution remain enigmatic. One of the most significant issues is its thermal history and the current thermal state. Several hypotheses involving a thermally-convecting inner core have been proposed: a simple, high-viscosity, translational mode, or a classical, lower-viscosity, plume-style convection. Here, we use state-of-the-art seismic imaging to probe the outermost shell of the inner core for its isotropic compressional speed and compare it with recently developed attenuation maps. The pattern emerging in the resulting tomograms is interpreted with recent data on the viscosity of iron as the inner core surface manifestation of a thermally-driven flow, with a positive correlation among compressional speed and attenuation and temperature. Although the outer-core convection controls the heat flux across the inner core boundary, the internally driven inner-core convection is a plausible model that explains a range of observations for the inner core, including distinct anisotropy in the innermost inner core.Australian Research Council’sMinisterio de Economía y Competitividad (España)Depto. de Física de la Tierra y AstrofísicaFac. de Ciencias FísicasTRUEpu

Machine Learning Interatomic Potential for Simulations of Carbon at Extreme Conditions

A Spectral Neighbor Analysis (SNAP) machine learning interatomic potential (MLIP) has been developed for simulations of carbon at extreme pressures (up to 5 TPa) and temperatures (up to 20,000 K). This was achieved using a large database of experimentally relevant quantum molecular dynamics (QMD) data, training the SNAP potential using a robust machine learning methodology, and performing extensive validation against QMD and experimental data. The resultant carbon MLIP demonstrates unprecedented accuracy and transferability in predicting the carbon phase diagram, melting curves of crystalline phases, and the shock Hugoniot, all within 3% of QMD. By achieving quantum accuracy and efficient implementation on leadership class high performance computing systems, SNAP advances frontiers of classical MD simulations by enabling atomic-scale insights at experimental time and length scales