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HP-HT mineral physics: implications for geosciences: Preface

¹ Università di Perugia, Italy
² Università di Padua, Italy
³ Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, USA

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Knowledge of the structure and properties of minerals plays the crucial role in understanding and interpreting geological and geophysical observations; without the input of such data it is not possible to derive a unique model for the structure and composition of the interior of the Earth at any level, whether in the crust or the lower mantle. Recent decades have seen great advances in the resolution and precision of geophysical and geological measurements, for example the development of high-resolution seismic tomography, that have driven the experimental community to provide more precise and accurate measurements of physical and thermodynamic properties of minerals and, in particular, their variation with temperature (T), pressure (P) and composition. Such data are now used to interpret the results of seismic tomography in terms of temperature or compositional changes. The developments in geophysical observations have also demanded that experimental measurements of minerals be performed at ever greater extremes of well-characterised pressures and temperatures. These have, in part, been enabled by the advent of more intense and new types of radiation sources, the third-generation synchrotrons and new pulsed neutron sources, with which to probe minute samples of minerals in new ways at such extreme conditions. These experimental advances in achievable pressures and temperatures have tended to dominate the field of science that has become known as "mineral physics", yet at the same time there have been considerable developments at more modest temperatures and pressures particularly in the precision and accuracy of data and the pressure scale itself, to the point at which different methods can be . . . [Full Text of this Article]