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Metallic osmium (Os) is one of the most exceptional elemental materials, having, at ambient pressure, the highest known density and one of the highest cohesive energies and melting temperatures (1). It is also very incompressible (2-4), but its high-pressure behaviour is not well understood because it has been studied (2-6) so far only at pressures below 75 gigapascals. Here we report powder X-ray diffraction measurements on Os at multi-megabar pressures using both conventional and double-stage diamond anvil cells (7), with accurate pressure determination ensured by first obtaining self-consistent equations of state of gold, platinum, and tungsten in static experiments up to 500 gigapascals. These measurements allow us to show that Os retains its hexagonal close-packed structure upon compression to over 770 gigapascals. But although its molar volume monotonically decreases with pressure, the unit cell parameter ratio of Os exhibits anomalies at approximately 150 gigapascals and 440 gigapascals. Dynamical mean-field theory calculations suggest that the former anomaly is a signature of the topological change of the Fermi surface for valence electrons. However, the anomaly at 440 gigapascals might be related to an electronic transition associated with pressure-induced interactions between core electrons. The ability to affect the core electrons under static high-pressure experimental conditions, even for incompressible metals such as Os, opens up opportunities to search for new states of matter under extreme compression., The platinoid 5d transition elements Re, Os, and Ir are the densest and stiffest metals (1, 7). Although a short-lived claim (4) that Os is stiffer than diamond (8) was [...]

Lithium is considered a 'simple' metal because, under ordinary conditions of pressure and temperature, the motion of conduction electrons is only weakly perturbed by interactions with the cubic lattice of atomic cores. It was recently predicted (1) that at pressures below 100 GPa, dense Li may undergo several structural transitions, possibly leading to a 'paired-atom' phase with low symmetry and near-insulating properties. Here we report synchrotron X-ray diffraction measurements that confirm that Li undergoes pronounced structural changes under pressure. Near 39 GPa, the element transforms from a high-pressure face-centred-cubic phase, through an intermediate rhombohedral modification, to a cubic polymorph with 16 atoms per unit cell. This cubic phase has not been observed previously in any element; unusually, its calculated electronic density of states exhibits a pronounced semimetal-like minimum near the Fermi energy. We present total-energy calculations that provide theoretical support for the observed phase transition sequence. Our calculations indicate a large stability range of the 16-atom cubic phase relative to various other crystal structures tested here., [FIGURE 1 OMITTED] The predictions by Neaton and Ashcroft (1) are in sharp contrast to intuitive expectation that the application of hydrostatic pressure favours high-coordination crystal structures with metallic properties. [...]