The phase diagrams of beryllium and magnesium oxide at megabar pressures

We perform ab initio simulations of beryllium (Be) and magnesium oxide (MgO) at megabar pressures and compare their structural and thermodynamic properties. We make a detailed comparison of our two recently derived phase diagrams of Be [Wu et al., Phys. Rev. B 104, 014103 (2021)] and MgO [Soubiran and Militzer, Phys. Rev. Lett. 125, 175701 (2020)] using the thermodynamic integration technique, as they exhibit striking similarities regarding their shape. We explore whether the Lindemann criterion can explain the melting temperatures of these materials through the calculation of the Debye temperature at high pressure. From our free energy calculations, we obtained a melting curve for Be that is well represented by the fit Tm(P) = 1564K*[1 + P/(15.8037 GPa)]^0.414 , and a melting line of MgO, which can be well reproduced by the fit Tm(P) = 3010K*(1 + P/a)^(1/c) with a = 10.5797 GPa and c = 2.8683 for the B1 phase and a = 26.1163 GPa and c = 2.2426 for the B2 phase. Both materials exhibit negative Clapeyron slopes on the boundaries between the two solid phases that are strongly affected by anharmonic effects, which also influences the location of the solid-solid-liquid triple point. We find that the quasi-harmonic approximation underestimates the stability range of the low-pressure phases, namely hcp for Be and B1 for MgO. We also compute the phonon dispersion relations at low and high pressure for each of the phases of these materials, and also explore how the phonon density of states is modified by temperature. Finally, we derive secondary shock Hugoniot curves in addition to the principal Hugoniot curve for both materials, and study their offsets in pressure between solid and liquid branches.

Non-quantum chirality in a driven Brusselator

We report the discovery of non-quantum chirality in the a periodically driven Brusselator. In contrast to standard chirality from quantum contexts, this novel type of chirality is governed by rate equations, namely by purely classical equations of motion. The Brusselator chirality was found by computing high-resolution phase diagrams depicting the number of spikes, local maxima, observed in stable periodic oscillations of the Brusselator as a function of the frequency and amplitude of the external drive. We also discuss how to experimentally observed non-quantum chirality in generic oscillators governed by nonlinear sets of rate equations.