Constraining the composition of Earth's interior with mineral elasticity
The composition and temperature of the Earth's interior are fundamental for understanding the Earth's interior and dynamics. Because it's impossible to directly access most areas of the Earth's interior, the combination of the elasticity of minerals at high pressure and temperature (PT) and seismic results is one of most practical ways to constrain the temperature and chemical composition of Earth's interior. This is done by determining what kinds of mineral aggregates have the same sound velocities and densities as Earth's interior. Therefore, the elasticity of minerals at high PT is crucial for translating the seismic sound velocity into composition and temperature. However, obtaining elasticity of minerals at high PT is highly challenging for experimental measurements and extremely expensive using the first-principles calculations. Wu and Wentzcovitch (2011) developed a new method, which reduces the computational loads to one-tenth of the traditional method. The method has been successfully applied to many minerals...