Related papers: Bond strengthening in dense H2O and implications t…
Knowing the phase transformations in dense water ice is key to unraveling the peculiar geophysical properties of Uranus and Neptune, whose stratified interior models predict a thick ice layer beneath a convective ionic fluid layer. In the…
\textit{Ab initio} random structure searching based on density functional theory is used to determine the ground-state structures of ice at high pressures. Including estimates of lattice zero-point energies, ice is found to adopt three…
Water is one of the key chemical elements in planetary structure modelling. Due to its complex phase diagram, equations of state cover often only parts of the pressure - temperature space needed in planetary modelling. We construct an…
Water photolysis and hydrogen loss from the upper atmospheres of terrestrial planets is of fundamental importance to climate evolution but remains poorly understood in general. Here we present a range of calculations we performed to study…
Coulomb repulsion between the unevenly-bounded bonding "-" and nonbonding ":" electron pairs in the "O2- : H+/p-O2-" hydrogen-bond is found to originate the anomalies of low-compressibility, phonon relaxation dynamics, proton symmetrization…
The hydrogen and water molecules respond very differently to the collisional-radiative processes taking place in planetary atmospheres. Naturally, the question arises whether H2O-rich atmospheres are more (or less) resilient to long-term…
The make-up of the outer planets, and many of their moons, are dominated by matter from the H-C-N-O chemical space, commonly assumed to originate from mixtures of hydrogen and the planetary ices H$_2$O, CH$_4$, and NH$_3$. In their…
UV irradiation of simple ices is proposed to efficiently produce complex organic species during star- and planet-formation. Through a series of laboratory experiments, we investigate the effects of the H2O concentration, the dominant ice…
Planet formation models suggest broad compositional diversity in the sub-Neptune/super-Earth regime, with a high likelihood for large atmospheric metal content (> 100 x Solar). With this comes the prevalence of numerous plausible bulk…
Many planets in the solar system and across the galaxy have hydrogen-rich atmospheres overlying more heavy element-rich interiors with which they interact for billions of years. Atmosphere-interior interactions are thus crucial to…
Future direct-imaging exoplanet missions such as WFIRST/AFTA, Exo-C, and Exo-S will measure the reflectivity of exoplanets at visible wavelengths. The exoplanets to be observed will be located further away from their parent stars than is…
High pressure behaviour of liquid GeO2 is investigated by means of molecular dynamics simulations in the pressure range 0-20 GPa and at various temperatures. In agreement with the recent experiments (PRL, 92, 155506, 2004), Ge-O…
We study the dynamics of water confined between hydrophobic flat surfaces at low temperature. At different pressures, we observe different behaviors that we understand in terms of the hydrogen bonds dynamics. At high pressure, the formation…
The moon-forming impact and the subsequent evolution of the proto-Earth is strongly dependent on the properties of materials at the extreme conditions generated by this violent collision. We examine the high pressure behavior of MgO, one of…
We investigate the possibility of achieving high-temperature superconductivity in hydrides under pressure by inducing metallization of otherwise insulating phases through doping, a path previously used to render standard semiconductors…
We map the high-pressure phase diagram of nitrogen hydrate up to 16 GPa at room temperature by combining neutron diffraction, Raman spectroscopy, and crystal structure prediction. We reveal a rich sequence of structural transformations,…
We study the transport of methane in the external water envelopes surrounding water-rich super-Earths and estimate its outgassing into the atmosphere. We investigate the influence of methane on the thermodynamics and mechanics of the water…
The structural, electronic, and spectroscopic properties of a high-pressure phase of methane hydrate (MH-III) are studied by first principles electronic structure calculations. A detailed analysis of the atomic positions suggests that {\it…
Coulomb repulsion between the unevenly-bound bonding and nonbonding electron pairs in the O:H-O hydrogen-bond is shown to originate the anomalies of ice under compression. Consistency between experimental observations, density functional…
The ever-expanding catalog of detected super-Earths calls for theoretical studies of their properties in the case of a substantial water layer. This work considers such water planets with a range of masses and water mass fractions (2 to 5…