Related papers: Radial gradient of superionic hydrogen in Earth's …
We present ab initio calculations of the high-temperature axial c/a ratio of hexagonal-close-packed (hcp) iron at Earth's core pressures, in order to help interpret the observed seismic anisotropy of the inner core. The calculations are…
Gas giants are believed to form by the accretion of hydrogen-helium gas around an initial protocore of rock and ice. The question of whether the rocky parts of the core dissolve into the fluid H-He layers following formation has significant…
The immiscibility of hydrogen-helium mixture under the temperature and pressure conditions of planetary interiors is crucial for understanding the structures of gas giant planets (e.g., Jupiter and Saturn). While the experimental probe at…
We present the first evolving interior structure model for sub-Neptunes that accounts for the miscibility between silicate magma and hydrogen. Silicate and hydrogen are miscible above $\sim 4000$K at pressures relevant to sub-Neptune…
The planet GJ 1214b is the second known super-Earth with a measured mass and radius. Orbiting a quiet M-star, it receives considerably less mass-loss driving X-ray and UV radiation than CoRoT-7b, so that the interior may be quite dissimilar…
Photo-evaporation shapes the observed radii of small exoplanets and constrains the underlying distributions of atmospheric and core masses. However, the diversity of atmospheric chemistries corresponding to these distributions remains…
Chondrites, the building blocks of the terrestrial planets, have mass and atomic proportions of oxygen, iron, magnesium, and silicon totaling $\geq$90\% and variable Mg/Si ($\sim$25\%), Fe/Si (factor of $\geq$2), and Fe/O (factor of…
With the assumption of local Tsallis equilibrium, the newly defined gravitational temperature is calculated in the solar interior, whose distribution curve can be divided into three parts, the solar core region, radiation region and…
The low luminosity of Uranus is a long-standing challenge in planetary science. Simple adiabatic models are inconsistent with the measured luminosity, which indicates that Uranus is non-adiabatic because it has thermal boundary layers…
The elemental compositions of exoplanets encode information about their formation environments and internal structures. While volatile ratios such as carbon-to-oxygen (C/O) are used to trace formation location, the rock-forming elements -…
Helium is the second most abundant element in the universe, and together with silica, they are major components of giant planets. Exploring the reactivity and state of helium and silica under high pressure is of fundamental importance for…
We investigate the consequences of non-ideal mixing between silicate, iron metal, and hydrogen for the structures of the cores of sub-Neptunes with implications for super-Earths, warm Neptunes, and ice giants. A method of extrapolating what…
Roughly 40% of the Earth's total heat flow is powered by radioactive decays in the crust and mantle. Geo-neutrinos produced by these decays provide important clues about the origin, formation and thermal evolution of our planet, as well as…
We elucidate the theoretically maximal thermal radiation power from real materials at a given temperature. Our results demonstrate that the thermal radiation from real materials may be larger than the blackbody emission in free space,and…
In inverted atomic ensembles, photon-mediated interactions give rise to Dicke superradiance, a form of many-body decay that results in a rapid release of energy as a photon burst. While originally studied in pointlike ensembles, this…
The mixing behavior of hydrogen with heavier elements plays a key role in modeling the interiors of giant planets such as Jupiter and Saturn. Using density functional theory combined with molecular dynamics, we investigate hydrogen-neon…
Estimated masses of fissioning and non-fissioning radioactive elements and their respective distributions within the Earth are presented, based upon the fundamental identity of the components of the interior 82% of the Earth, the…
Earth's magnetic field is generated by the liquid outer core and sensitively depends on the thermal conductivity of the core. The dominant component of the Earth's core is Fe and Ni. However, current estimates on FeNi mixtures have not been…
Around our Sun, terrestrial planets did not grow beyond Earth in mass, while super-Earths are found to orbit approximately every other solar-like star. It remains unclear what divides these super-Earth systems from those that form…
The pressure-temperature phase diagram of a one-component system, with particles interacting through a spherically symmetric pair potential in two dimensions is studied. The interaction consists of a hard core plus an additional repulsion…