Motions at the core surface derived from SV data

Summary. Examples of core motions which generate the observed secular variation field – as given by various models for 1970 and 1980 – from the main field have been computed in the frozen flux approximation, assuming that the spectrum of the motion is of low degree and decreases with wave-number. No mode of degree > 4 in the expansion of the motion can be derived with any degree of confidence. Among the low degree modes, some appear to be stable (they come out with the same magnitude whatever the inversion scheme used). The flow made of these stable modes is then examined. An outstanding feature of the flow is the body westward drift. But it seems necessary, if one looks for such a regular flow, to consider both toroïdal and poloïdal components, which would imply upwelling and down-welling in the upper layers of the core. The toroïdal part of the flow appears to be enhanced by the 1969 impulse, although its geometry is nearly unchanged. On the contrary the geometry of the computed poloïdal part is different in 1980 and in 1970;     

Dislocation-mediated melting of iron and the temperature of the Earth's core

Summary . Dislocation theories of melting provide a possibility of calculating the melting temperature, from first principles, as the temperature at which the free energy of a crystal saturated with dislocations becomes equal to that of the dislocation-free crystal. After a brief review of the physical bases of the dislocation melting theories, Ninomiya's theory is used to determine the melting temperature as well as the volume and entropy of melting and the slope of the melting curve for iron at atmospheric pressure and under conditions prevailing at the Earth's inner core boundary. The necessary parameters (elastic moduli, Grüneisen parameter) are drawn from seismological earth models. We find a melting temperature of the material of the inner core of about 6150 K, independent of shock-wave experiments but in good agreement with them and with extrapolations using Lindemann's law. With usually accepted values of the melting point depression due to light elements in solution, the temperature at the inner core boundary is found to be T _ICB≅ 5000 K. This temperature is compatible with a temperature of the outer core at the core-mantle boundary T _CMB≅ 3800 K. Dislocation melting theories can thus help constrain the temperature profile in the Earth's core.     

Properties of iron at the Earth's core conditions

Summary. The phase diagram of iron up to 330 GPa is solved using the experimental data of static high pressure (up to 11 GPa) and the experimental data of shock wave data (up to 250 GPa). A solution for the highest triple point is found ( P = 280 GPa and T = 5760 K) by imposing the thermodynamic constraints of triple points. This pressure of the triple point is less than the pressure of the inner core–outer core boundary of the Earth. These results indicate that the density of iron at the inner core–outer core boundary pressure is close to 13 g cm⁻³, which lies close to the seismic solutions of the Earth at that pressure. It is thus concluded that the Earth's inner core is very likely to be virtually pure iron in its hexagonal close packed (hcp) phase.
It is shown that four properties of the Earth's inner core determined from seismology are close in value to the corresponding properties of hcp iron at inner core conditions: density, bulk modulus, longitudinal velocity, and Poisson's ratio. The density–pressure profile of hcp iron at inner core conditions matches the density–pressure profile of the inner core as determined by seismic methods, within the spread of values given by recent seismic models.
This indicates that the Earth is slowly cooling, the Earth's inner core is growing by crystallization, and the impurities of the core are concentrated in the outer core. The calculated temperature at the Earth's centre is 6450 K.