Electrical Conductivity of High-Pressure Liquid Hydrogen by Quantum Monte Carlo Methods

Fei Lin, Miguel A. Morales, Kris T. Delaney, Carlo Pierleoni, Richard M. Martin, and D. M. Ceperley

Phys. Rev. Lett. 103, 256401 – Published 14 December 2009

Abstract

We compute the electrical conductivity for liquid hydrogen at high pressure using Monte Carlo techniques. The method uses coupled electron-ion Monte Carlo simulations to generate configurations of liquid hydrogen. For each configuration, correlated sampling of electrons is performed in order to calculate a set of lowest many-body eigenstates and current-current correlation functions of the system, which are summed over in the many-body Kubo formula to give ac electrical conductivity. The extrapolated dc conductivity at 3000 K for several densities shows a liquid semiconductor to liquid-metal transition at high pressure. Our results are in good agreement with shock-wave data.

Received 11 September 2009

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.103.256401

Authors & Affiliations

Fei Lin¹, Miguel A. Morales¹, Kris T. Delaney², Carlo Pierleoni³, Richard M. Martin^1,4, and D. M. Ceperley¹

¹Department of Physics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois 61801, USA
²Materials Research Laboratory, University of California, Santa Barbara, California 93106, USA
³CNISM and Department of Physics, University of L’Aquila, L’Aquila, Italy
⁴Department of Applied Physics, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305, USA

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Vol. 103, Iss. 25 — 18 December 2009

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