As the most stable element in the periodic table and a final fusion product of stars, iron is ubiquitous in the universe, and its presence likely leads to the formation of cores in planetary bodies that form from refractory oxides, similar to the terrestrial bodies in our solar system, termed super-Earths. Physical and chemical properties of iron at high pressure are therefore of great...
The interiors of icy planets are thought to comprise H/He-rich atmospheres followed by vast ‘hot ice’ mantle regions and, possibly, small rocky cores. The ‘hot ice’ layers, the largest water reservoirs in planetary systems, are chemically very complex and while individual constituents (water, methane, ammonia) have been studied in great detail both computationally and experimentally, their...
The detection of more than 4000 exoplanets, most of them having no equivalent in the Solar Systems, stimulates numerous fields of research in order to better understand the structure, the formation, the evolution and the habitability of these new worlds. In order to build realistic models, astrophysicists are in need for the physical properties (equations of state, phase diagrams, transport...
The question of whether hydrogen and water mixtures are miscible at planetary temperatures and pressures deep in the interior of planets like Uranus and Neptune remains unresolved. In 2021, Bergermann et al [1] used the Gibbs-ensemble Monte Carlo simulation method and found a huge miscibility gap which shows reasonable agreement with the experimental data of Bali et al [2]. Soubiran and...
An earlier study [1] benchmarked Density Functional Theory (DFT) coupled with classical Molecular Dynamics (MD) with all available experimental data on dense helium in recent years. A subsequent study [2] calculated the helium melting line with DFT-MD. These two studies allows for the examination of the metallization of fluid helium consistently with DFTMD [3].
We study the insulator-to-metal...
