Melting and thermal expansion of iron in uniformly laser-heated diamond anvil cells

Abstract

A technique is described to laser heat samples uniformly under hydrostatic pressure conditions to over 2500 K and 400 kbar with very high accuracy in P and T. I re-measured the melting curve of iron by this technique and obtained excellent agreement with my earlier work using resistive wire heating (Boehler 1986). P-V-T measurements on γ-iron to 200 kbar and 2000 K using synchrotron radiation leads to a strong decrease of the thermal expansion coefficient with pressure, (?lnα/?lnV)_T = 6.5. The zero pressure bulk modulus K₀ decreases with temperature by 0.33 kbar deg^?1. This Yields densities of iron at conditions in the Earth's core which are consistent with shock compression measurements. The potiential of studying mineralogical phase transitions by this method is described.