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Earth's core conductivities for pure iron and iron mixtures in the liquid outer core and solid inner core (NERC Grant NE/H02462X/1)

Publisher
British Geological Survey (BGS)
Updated
13 August 2026
Topic
Not set
Licence
Not set

Summary

This dataset contains VASP runs performed on ARCHER to calculate the electrical and thermal conductivities of pure iron and iron alloys at Earth's core conditions using density functional theory with the Kubo-Greenwood formulation. Data are available for both the solid and the liquid phase characterising the inner and outer core respectively. Also included in the dataset the runs for computing the lattice contribution to the electrical resistivity of magnetic bcc iron at ambient pressure and two low temperatures and for computing the melting curve of fcc nickel. These data were also used for the modelling of the geodynamo and the thermal history of the Earth, to calculate the transport properties for silicon-oxygen-iron mixtures and to confirm the saturation of electrical resistivity of solid iron at Earth’s core conditions. The results from this dataset showed that both conductivities are much larger than previously thought with important implications for the geodynamo and the thermal history of the Earth, benefitting the geodynamo community. The results of our research have been recently confirmed by new experimental results obtained at Earth's core conditions. Further details can be found in Alfè et al. (2012); Pozzo et al. (2012, 2013a, 2013b, 2014, 2016); Gubbins et al. (2015); Davies et al. (2015). NERC Grant is NE/H02462X/1.

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Additional information

Source Metadata
XML, HTML
Date added
12 August 2026
Harvest GUID
416c000d-dda2-4174-e054-002128a47908
Dataset reference date (creation)
2014-11
Frequency of update
notApplicable
Access constraints
The copyright of materials derived from the British Geological Survey's work is vested in the Natural Environment Research Council [NERC]. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a retrieval system of any nature, without the prior permission of the copyright holder, via the BGS Intellectual Property Rights Manager. Use by customers of information provided by the BGS, is at the customer's own risk. In view of the disparate sources of information at BGS's disposal, including such material donated to BGS, that BGS accepts in good faith as being accurate, the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) gives no warranty, expressed or implied, as to the quality or accuracy of the information supplied, or to the information's suitability for any use. NERC/BGS accepts no liability whatever in respect of loss, damage, injury or other occurence however caused.
Responsible party
University College London (pointOfContact)
ISO 19139 resource type
nonGeographicDataset
Metadata language
eng