Journal article : Letter
Experimental observation of open structures in elemental magnesium at terapascal pressures
- Abstract:
- Investigating how solid matter behaves at enormous pressures, such as those found in the deep interiors of giant planets, is a great experimental challenge. Over the past decade, computational predictions have revealed that compression to terapascal pressures may bring about counter-intuitive changes in the structure and bonding of solids as quantum mechanical forces grow in influence1,2,3,4,5,6. Although this behaviour has been observed at modest pressures in the highly compressible light alkali metals7,8, it has not been established whether it is commonplace among high-pressure solids more broadly. We used shaped laser pulses at the National Ignition Facility to compress elemental Mg up to 1.3 TPa, which is approximately four times the pressure at the Earth’s core. By directly probing the crystal structure using nanosecond-duration X-ray diffraction, we found that Mg changes its crystal structure several times with non-close-packed phases emerging at the highest pressures. Our results demonstrate that phase transformations of extremely condensed matter, previously only accessible through theoretical calculations, can now be experimentally explored.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 5.7MB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1038/s41567-022-01732-7
Authors
- Publisher:
- Springer Nature
- Journal:
- Nature Physics More from this journal
- Volume:
- 18
- Issue:
- 11
- Pages:
- 1307-1311
- Publication date:
- 2022-09-19
- Acceptance date:
- 2022-07-15
- DOI:
- EISSN:
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1745-2481
- ISSN:
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1745-2473
- Language:
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English
- Keywords:
- Subtype:
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Letter
- Pubs id:
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1264440
- Local pid:
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pubs:1264440
- Deposit date:
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2022-06-22
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Gorman et al.
- Copyright date:
- 2022
- Rights statement:
- © 2022, The Author(s). Open Access. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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