In their comment, Desjarlais et al. claim that a small temperature drop occurs after isentropic compression of fluid deuterium through the first-order insulator-metal transition. We show that their calculations do not correspond to the experimental thermodynamic path, and that thermodynamic integrations with parameters from first-principles calculations produce results in agreement with our original estimate of the temperature drop.
Celliers et al. (Reports, 17 August 2018, p. 677), in an attempt to reconcile differences in inferred metallization pressures, provide an alternative temperature analysis of the Knudson et al. experiments (Reports, 26 June 2015, p. 1455). We show that this reanalysis implies an anomalously low specific heat for the metallic fluid that is clearly inconsistent with first-principles calculations.
Pressure-Induced Insulator–Metal Transition in Silicon Telluride from First-Principles Calculations