Extreme compression of planetary gases: High-accuracy pressure-density measurements of hydrogen-helium mixtures above fourfold compression
Hydrogen (H 2 ) and helium (He), the most abundant elements in the universe, pose a unique challenge in measuring the equation of state of the mixture, owing to their differing physical properties. There remains a need for data with high enough precision to discriminate between existing equation of state (EOS) mix models in order to understand the internal structure of gas-giant planets. Here, we have measured the EOS of precompressed H 2 - He mixtures at conditions directly relevant to the planetary interiors using hypervelocity gas guns and Sandia’s Z machine with less than 10% uncertainty in density, enabling validation of mixture models. We precompressed 50:50 molar mixtures of H 2 -He to 0.1–0.2 GPa and directly measured particle velocity (in gas-gun experiments) and shock velocities (in Z-machine experiments). To complement the experimental efforts, we also computed the Hugoniots of precompressed H 2 -He mixtures using density-functional-theory-based molecular dynamics. Furthermore, we observe approximately 3- to 4.3-fold density compression at pressures up to 44 GPa.