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    COLLOQUIUM OF THE COMPUTATIONAL MATERIALS SCIENCE CENTER
AND THE SCHOOL OF PHYSICS, ASTRONOMY, & COMPUTATIONAL SCIENCES
                           (CSI 898-Sec 001)
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              Predicting Pressure-Induced Phase Transitions

                          Michael J. Mehl
Center for Computational Materials Science, Naval Research Laboratory
                              Washington DC

It is well known that with enough pressure graphite can be turned into
diamond.  For most materials, however, these phase transitions are not known,
which is unfortunate, as the new structures produced by under pressure might
have properties vastly different from their predecessors.   In addition,
high-pressure experiments require equipment such as diamond anvil cells and
X-ray crystallography.

Computational physics can speed up the process of searching for
pressure-induced phase transitions, at the cost of finding many structures
that will never be seen experimentally.  This talk describes the computational
methods used to predict structural phase transitions, and discusses ways to
determine whether or not a predicted structure can actually be formed. 

                      Monday, April 2, 2012
                              4:30 pm
                   Room 301, Research I, Fairfax Campus

Refreshments will be served at 4:15 PM.
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Find the schedule at http://www.cmasc.gmu.edu/seminar/schedule.html