Search

Superionic ices with highly mobile protons within the stable oxygen sub-lattice occupy an important proportion of the phase diagram of ice and widely exist in the interior of icy giants and throughout the universe. Understanding the thermal transport in superionic ice is vital for the thermal evolution of icy planets. However, it is highly challenging due to the extreme thermodynamic conditions and dynamical nature of protons, beyond the capability of the traditional lattice dynamics and empirical potential molecular dynamics approaches. In this work, by utilizing the deep potential molecular dynamics approach, we investigate the thermal conductivity of ice-VII and superionic ice-VII" along the isobar of $p = 30\ \rm{GPa}$. A non-monotonic trend of thermal conductivity with elevated temperature is observed. Through heat flux decomposition and trajectory-based spectra analysis, we show that the thermally-activated proton diffusion in ice-VII and superionic ice-VII" contribute significantly to heat convection, while the broadening in vibrational energy peaks and significant softening of transverse acoustic branches lead to a reduction in heat conduction. The competition between proton diffusion and phonon scattering results in anomalous thermal transport across the superionic transition in ice. This work unravels the important role of proton diffusion in the thermal transport of high-pressure ice. Our approach provides new insights into modeling the thermal transport and atomistic dynamics in superionic materials., Comment: 5 figures

Modern laboratory techniques like ultrafast laser excitation and shock compression can bring matter into highly nonequilibrium states with complex structural transformation, metallization and dissociation dynamics. To understand and model the dramatic change of both electronic structures and ion dynamics during such dynamic processes, the traditional method faces difficulties. Here, we demonstrate the ability of deep neural network (DNN) to capture the atomic local-environment dependence of electronic density of states (DOS) for both multicomponent system under exoplanet thermodynamic condition and nonequilibrium system during super-heated melting process. Large scale and time-resolved diagnosis of DOS can be efficiently achieved within the accuracy of ab initio method. Moreover, the atomic contribution to DOS given by DNN model accurately reveals the information of local neighborhood for selected atom, thus can serve as robust order parameters to identify different phases and intermediate local structures, strongly highlights the efficacy of this DNN model in studying dynamic processes., Comment: 7 Figures, accepted by PRB

For a long time, there have been huge discrepancies between different models and experiments concerning the liquid-liquid phase transition (LLPT) in dense hydrogen. In this work, we present the results of extensive calculations of the LLPT in dense hydrogen using the most expensive first-principle path-integral molecular dynamics simulations available. The nonlocal density functional rVV10 and hybrid functional PBE0 are used to improve the description of the electronic structure of hydrogen. Of all the density functional theory calculations available, we report the most consistent results through quantum Monte Carlo simulations and coupled electron-ion Monte Carlo simulations of the LLPT in dense hydrogen. The critical point of the first-order LLPT is estimated above 2000 K according to the equation of state. Moreover, the metallization pressure obtained from the jump of dc electrical conductivity almost coincides with the plateau of equation of state.

Transport properties of dense liquid helium under the conditions of planet's core and cool atmosphere of white dwarfs have been investigated by using the improved centroid path-integral simulations combined with density functional theory. The self-diffusion is largely higher and the shear viscosity is notably lower predicted with the quantum mechanical description of the nuclear motion compared with the description by Newton equation. The results show that nuclear quantum effects (NQEs), which depends on the temperature and density of the matter via the thermal de Broglie wavelength and the ionization of electrons, are essential for the transport properties of dense liquid helium at certain astrophysical conditions. The Stokes-Einstein relation between diffusion and viscosity in strongly coupled regime is also examined to display the influences of NQEs., Comment: 6 figures