High-pressure x-ray diffraction study of solid xenon and its equation of state in relation to metallization transition

A high-pressure x-ray diffraction study of solid xenon was performed at pressures up to 32 GPa at room temperature using a diamond-anvil cell. The fcc structure was found to remain stable up to the maximum pressure used in the present study. An equation of state of Birch-Murnaghan type was fitted to the compression data reduced to 0 K to obtain the pressure-volume relation of solid xenon under an extremely high pressure. On the basis of this Birch-Murnaghan equation of state at 0 K and the optical absorption data reported previously, the pressure-induced metallization transition in solid xenon is expected to take place when the volume is compressed to about 10 ${\mathrm{cm}}^3$/mol and the corresponding pressure is about 200 GPa. In the present work, the molar volume was reduced to 16.3 ${\mathrm{cm}}^3$/mol at 32 GPa ($V_0=34.74\mathrm{}$ ${\mathrm{cm}}^3$/mol at 0 K).