Melting behaviour of the candidate minerals for planetary models

The discovery of super-Earths and extra solar giant planets has made high pressure physics relevant for determining the formation and composition of these planets.We have developed a model to determine the pressure dependence of melting temperature, T_m and the Debye temperature, Θ_D of materials utilizing Grüneisen parameter, ξ and the bulk modulus, B as the basic ingredients. The formalism has been applied to estimate the pressure dependence of melting temperature and Debye temperature of one of the candidate minerals such as quartz (stishovite, SiO ₂). The pressure range used in the present study is 0-6000GPa commensurate with the interior pressures of giant exoplanets. The results show an excellent agreement with the available experimental and other theoretical results.