Liquid silicates to high pressures

Project description

"The physical properties of silicates in the liquid state are important to constrain the differentiation processes within the ocean of magma formed in the first moments of our planet, but also to interpret the seismic signatures observed today at the core-mantle interface. Unfortunately, it is experimentally very complex to probe these liquids at high pressures. This project aims at overcoming this technological hurdle, by performing ultra-fast in situ measurements by X-ray diffraction (using static or dynamic compression), using the advent of new X-ray sources such as Free Electron Lasers.
This project is supported by the thesis of Nicolas Jaisle, co-supervised in the team GeoDynamo by David Cébron and myself. Analyses of the recovered samples will be carried out in collaboration with Anne-Line Auzende. Finally, the implications around seismic anomalies at the core-mantle interface will be discussed with Pierre Boué, within the Transverse Imaging and Internal Earth Dynamics axis. Finally, a pre-project ANR around these themes has been submitted in December 2020. "