Our ability to interpret seismic observations including the seismic discontinuities and the density and velocity profiles in the earth's interior is critically dependent on the accuracy of pressure measurements up to 364 GPa at high temperature. Pressure scales based on the reduced shock-wave equations of state alone may predict pressure variations up to 7% in the megabar pressure range at room temperature and even higher percentage at high temperature, leading to large uncertainties in understanding the nature of the seismic discontinuities and chemical composition of the earth's interior. Here, we report compression data of gold (Au), platinum (Pt), the NaCl-B2 phase, and solid neon (Ne) at 300 K and high temperatures up to megabar pressures. Combined with existing experimental data, the compression data were used to establish internally consistent thermal equations of state of Au, Pt, NaCl-B2, and solid Ne. The internally consistent pressure scales provide a tractable, accurate baseline for comparing high pressuretemperature experimental data with theoretical calculations and the seismic observations, thereby advancing our understanding fundamental high-pressure phenomena and the chemistry and physics of the earth's interior.diamond-anvil cell ͉ high-pressure research ͉ pressure calibration ͉ thermodynamics ͉ x-ray diffraction T he earth has a layered internal structure with distinct boundaries. The boundaries of the five main layers (the upper mantle, the transition zone, the lower mantle, the liquid outer core, and the solid inner core) are well defined by the observed seismic velocity discontinuities at depths of 400, 670, 2,891, and 5,149 km (corresponding to pressures of 13.4, 23.8, 135.8, and 328.9 GPa, respectively) in a global average preliminary reference earth model (PREM) (1). The interpretation of these discontinuities requires experimental investigations of earth materials at high pressure and temperature. The seismic discontinuities near 400 and 670 km depth are commonly associated with the mineralogical phase transformations of (Mg,Fe) 2 SiO 4 from ␣-olivine to ␤-phase (wadsleyite) and from ␥-spinel (ringwoodite) to (Mg,Fe)SiO 3 -perovskite plus (Mg,Fe)O-magnesiowüstite, respectively (2). With the rapid increase in the use of broadband seismometers and seismic arrays, seismologists have been able to determine the depths of the 400-and 670-km discontinuities and their lateral variation with increasingly finer resolutions (3). To correlate the observed seismic variability with the compositional and thermal variations in the mantle, we have to be able to determine mantle phase transitions with high accuracy, better than 1% in pressure determination (i.e., Ϯ0.25 GPa at 25 GPa). Similarly, it is critically dependent on the accuracy in pressure determination whether or not the recently discovered postperovskite transition (4, 5) indeed occurs at the base of the lower mantle and accounts for a number of seismic anomalies observed in the DЉ region. Because the DЉ layer is observed in a narrow depth int...

We report spectroscopic evidence for the pressure-induced structural changes in B2O3 glass quenched from melts at pressures up to 6 GPa using solid-state NMR. While all borons are tri-coordinated at 1 atm, the fraction of tetra-coordinated boron increases with pressure, being about 5% and 27% in the B2O3 glass quenched from melts at 2 and 6 GPa, respectively. The fraction of boroxol ring species increases with pressure up to 2 GPa and apparently decreases with further compression up to 6 GPa. Two densification mechanisms are proposed to explain the variation of boron species with pressure.

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The second critical endpoint in the basalt-H 2 O system was directly determined by a high-pressure and high-temperature X-ray radiography technique. We found that the second critical endpoint occurs at around 3.4 GPa and 770°C (corresponding to a depth of approximately 100 km in a subducting slab), which is much shallower than the previously estimated conditions. Our results indicate that the melting temperature of the subducting oceanic crust can no longer be defined beyond this critical condition and that the fluid released from subducting oceanic crust at depths greater than 100 km under volcanic arcs is supercritical fluid rather than aqueous fluid and/or hydrous melts. The position of the second critical endpoint explains why there is a limitation to the slab depth at which adakitic magmas are produced, as well as the origin of across-arc geochemical variations of trace elements in volcanic rocks in subduction zones.water | island arc | silicate melt | synchrotron X-ray | high-pressure research W ater plays an important role in subduction-zone magmatism because it can reduce the melting temperature of rocks in subduction zones and hence can generate magmas (1-7). There is a long-standing debate about whether the fluids released from a subducting slab are aqueous fluid, hydrous silicate melt, supercritical fluid (SCF), or a combination of these (2,4,(8)(9)(10)(11)(12). Whether the subducting slab melts or dehydrates depends on the thermal structure and the phase relation of slab materials under hydrous conditions. Therefore, this long-standing question cannot be answered until the detailed stability fields of these fluids are clarified.Under high-pressure (P) and high-temperature (T) conditions, it has been shown that the solubility of both water in silicate melt (13-16) and silicate in aqueous fluid (13, 17-25) increases with increasing P. As a result, silicate melt and aqueous fluid in the interior of the Earth are expected to become SCF, and the hydrous solidus of the system can no longer be defined beyond a certain critical condition (26-36). This condition is called the second (or upper) critical endpoint (26) and is the point of intersection between the critical curve and hydrous solidus. Basalt is one of the dominant constituents of a subducting slab and is considered the main carrier of water that triggers the melting of rocks in subduction zones. Therefore, the second critical endpoint in the basalt-H 2 O system has to be determined in order to understand fully the subduction-zone magmatism.In some silicic silicate-H 2 O systems, the location of the second critical endpoint has been reported [e.g., 1.0 GPa, 1,080°C in the SiO 2 -H 2 O system (13); 1.5 GPa, 670°C in the system NaAlSi 3 O 8 -H 2 O (21); 1.5 GPa, 800°C in the system KAlSi 3 O 8 -H 2 O (36)]. In mafic systems, however, the determination of the second critical endpoints is not easy because of the difficulty in identifying phases (aqueous fluid versus hydrous silicate melt) in the recovered samples quenched from high-P and high-T conditio...

[1] The second critical endpoint in the peridotite-H 2 O system has been determined using an X-ray radiography technique together with a Kawai-type, double-stage, multianvil system driven by DIA-type cubic press (SPEED-1500) installed at SPring-8, Japan. The pressure of the second critical endpoint was determined by the appearance and disappearance of round shape in the radiographic images with changing the experimental pressure. In the experiments up to 3.6 GPa, two fluid phases (i.e., aqueous fluid and hydrous silicate melt) were observed. At 4.0 GPa, however, we could not distinguish these two phases in the radiographic images. These observations indicate the second critical endpoint occurs at around 3.8 GPa and 1000°C (corresponding to a depth of $110 km) in the peridotite-H 2 O system. Our experimental results suggest that hydrous silicate melt and aqueous fluid in the Earth's mantle become indistinguishable from each other and that melting temperature of hydrous mantle peridotite can no longer be defined beyond this critical condition. This position of the second critical endpoint could explain the previously observed drastic changes in composition and connectivity of aqueous fluid in mantle peridotite at around 3-4 GPa and could play an important role in magmatism and chemical evolution of the Earth's interior.

[1] We determined the compressional velocity of hcp-Fe using high-resolution inelastic X-ray scattering combined with in situ X-ray powder diffraction: Our measurements extend up to 174 GPa at room temperature, to 88 GPa at 700 K, and to 61.5 GPa at 1000 K. Our data, including those obtained at high temperature, are well described by a linear relation to density, extending the range of verification of Birch's law and suggesting only small temperature dependence up to 1000 K. This result, once compared to the preliminary reference Earth model seismologically based model, indicates that there is either a strong temperature effect on Birch's law above 1000 K or the composition of the core is rather different than expected, containing, e.g., heavy impurities. Noting that both recent theoretical calculations and shock wave velocity measurements are consistent with modification of Birch's law at high temperature, we favor the former explanation.