Mineralogy Lecture Series: Joshua Townsend

Description

Joshua Townsend, from Sandia National Laboratories, will give a talk entitled "Shocks on Rocks Using Z+DFT" as part of the Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences' Mineralogy Lecture Series.

Abstract:

Planetary interiors are extreme environments that significantly modify the physical and chemical properties of materials compared to their ambient states. Lacking direct access to the deep interiors of planets, we resort to experiments and theory on common materials. In this talk, I will discuss recent efforts combining experimental and theoretical approaches to study the properties of planetary materials across a wide region of thermodynamic states. Using the Z Machine at Sandia National Laboratories, the world's largest pulsed power source, we probe the principal Hugoniot states of forsterite Mg2SiO4, bridgmanite MgSiO3, and other materials up to 10 million times ambient pressure. These experiments, combined with ab-initio atomistic simulations, give us significant insight into the processes of accretion and subsequent thermal evolution of planets.