Effect of chainlike structures on shock-compressed liquid deuterium - art.no. 134210

We show that the presence of short chainlike structures in the dense fluid, modeled hero for simplification as tetramers, can provide a mechanism to e xplain the surprisingly large compressibility of liquid deuterium observed in recent shock experiments at megabar pressures. The presence of chains le ads to a large increase in the density of states and to a lowering of the H ugoniot temperature thereby increasing the compressibility that in turn inc reases the maximum density attained by the Hugoniot.