Sound velocities of hexagonal close-packed H2 and He under pressure

Bulk, shear, and compressional aggregate sound velocities of hydrogen and helium in the close- packed hexagonal structure are calculated over a wide pressure range using two complementary approaches: semi-empirical lattice dynamics based on the many-body intermolecular potentials and density-functional theory in the generalized gradient approximation. The sound velocities are used to calculate pressure dependence of the Debye temperature. The comparison between experiment and first-principle and semi-empirical calculations provide constraints on the density dependence of intermolecular interactions in the zero-temperature limit.