Public Physic Colloquium in the Summer Terms 2013
Place:     Germany, 48149 Münster, Wilhelm-Klemm-Str. 10, IG I, HS 2
Time:     Thursday, 20.06.2013  16:00 h c.t.
Colloquium Coffee at 15:45 h  at the Lecture Hall

D'' - Caught between a Rock and a Core
Prof. Dr. John Brodholt, Department of Earth Sciences, University College London

Between the Earth's mantle and its liquid iron core is a region known prosaically as D''. We have known
about D'' since the 1950’s and it exhibits many interesting and varied seismic properties. In 2004, a phase
transition from the lower mantle phase perovskite to a new post-perovksite phase of (Mg,Fe)SiO3 was discovered to occur at around the pressure conditions of D''. Much of what we see in D'' now seems to be explained by this phase transition. In a 2005 Nature editorial I was quoted as saying "Is that it?". Is D'' really just yet another mantle phase transition? Since then there have been around 600 papers on postperovskite, on its properties and how it affects the dynamics and behaviour of the Earth as a whole. So is that it? Is D'' just a phase transition, and if so, how does it affect how the Earth works? In this talk I give an overview of this interesting part of the Earth, together with some of our results using Density Functional Theory to obtain the properties of the post-perovskite phase.

Invited from: Prof. Dr. Christine Thomas

By Order of the Professors of the Department of Physics

Prof. Dr. Nikos Doltsinis