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Title: Electronic structure and enthalpy of hydrogen and helium mixtures

Technical Report ·
DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/10157943· OSTI ID:10157943

The first local density approximation (LDA) calculations of the electronic structure, equation of state and enthalpy of mixing were carried out for a number of different compositions of hydrogen and helium in bcc and fcc lattices. These are fully quantum mechanical, self-consistent calculations utilizing state-of-the-art methods of electron band theory, which make no assumptions regarding pressure ionization. The major approximation in the LDA method is that the exchange and correlation energy is given by a free electron functional in terms of the local electron density. The majority of previous mixture calculations start with the assumption that both hydrogen and helium are pressure-ionized so that the electronic structure is approximately that of free or weakly screened electrons in the presence of positive ions. Stevenson used a hard-sphere mixture model for the ions with an ion-ion pseudopotential to account for electron screening and predicted that a mixture containing 7% helium by number, the composition believed to be present in Jupiter and Saturn, would phase separate at a temperature of about 7000 K at 8 Mbar. Subsequent calculations carried out for the fully ionized mixture and for a mixture of screened ions (linear response theory) have all arrived at predictions similar to those of Stevenson. MacFarlane and Hubbard performed ThomasFermi-Dirac calculations for mixing enthalpies of hydrogen and helium in bcc and fcc lattices and predicted that phase separation would not occur at any temperature.

Research Organization:
Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE, Washington, DC (United States)
DOE Contract Number:
W-7405-ENG-48
OSTI ID:
10157943
Report Number(s):
UCRL-JC-112346; CONF-9208135-7; ON: DE93014128
Resource Relation:
Conference: International conference on the physics of strongly coupled plasmas,Rochester, NY (United States),17-21 Aug 1992; Other Information: PBD: Nov 1992
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English