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Electronic correlations and transport in iron at Earth's core conditions

Pourovskii, LV; Mravlje, J; Pozzo, M; Alfè, D; (2020) Electronic correlations and transport in iron at Earth's core conditions. nature communications , 11 (1) , Article 4105. 10.1038/s41467-020-18003-9. Green open access

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Abstract

The transport properties of iron under Earth's inner core conditions are essential input for the geophysical modelling but are poorly constrained experimentally. Here we show that the thermal and electrical conductivity of iron at those conditions remains high even if the electron-electron-scattering (EES) is properly taken into account. This result is obtained by ab initio simulations taking into account consistently both thermal disorder and electronic correlations. Thermal disorder suppresses the non-Fermi-liquid behavior of the body-centered cubic iron phase, hence, reducing the EES; the total calculated thermal conductivity of this phase is 220 Wm-1 K-1 with the EES reduction not exceeding 20%. The EES and electron-lattice scattering are intertwined resulting in breaking of the Matthiessen's rule with increasing EES. In the hexagonal close-packed iron the EES is also not increased by thermal disorder and remains weak. Our main finding thus holds for the both likely iron phases in the inner core.

Type: Article
Title: Electronic correlations and transport in iron at Earth's core conditions
Location: England
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-18003-9
Publisher version: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-18003-9
Language: English
Additional information: This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences > Dept of Earth Sciences
URI: https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10108195
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