(Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2013) Dzyabura, Vasily; Zaghoo, Mohamed; Silvera, Isaac
We use pulsed-laser heating of hydrogen at static pressures in the megabar pressure region to search for the plasma phase transition to liquid atomic metallic hydrogen. We heat our samples substantially above the melting line and observe a plateau in a temperature vs. laser power curve that otherwise increases with power. This anomaly in the heating curve appears correlated with theoretical predictions for the plasma phase transition.
(2014-06-24) Dzyabura, Vasily; Silvera, Isaac F.; Pershan, Peter; Kaxiras, Efthimios
The primary subject of this thesis is the study of warm dense hydrogen by means of pulsed laser heating in the pressure region 1 to 2 Mbar and temperatures above the melting line, where a liquid-liquid phase transition from the insulating molecular fluid to a conducting atomic hydrogen fluid, so called plasma phase transition (PPT), was predicted to take place. The first evidence of the PPT under static compression is reported. The observations are in agreement with the negative slope phase line predicted by ab initio methods.
