Electron-electron scattering and thermal conductivity of epsilon-iron at Earths core conditions

Abstract

The electronic state and transport properties of hot dense iron are of the utmost importance for the understanding of Earths interior. Combining state-of-the-art density functional and dynamical mean field theories we study the impact of electron correlations on the electrical and thermal resistivity of hexagonal close-packed epsilon-Fe at Earths core conditions and show that the electron-electron scattering in epsilon-Fe exhibit a nearly perfect Fermi-liquid (FL) behavior. Accordingly, the quadratic dependence of the scattering rate, typical of FLs, leads to a modification of the Wiedemann-Franz law and suppresses the thermal conductivity with respect to the electrical one. The consequence is a significant increase of the electron-electron thermal resistivity, which is found to be of comparable magnitude to the electron-phonon one. ; Funding Agencies|European Research Council [ERC-319286 QMAC]; Slovenian Research Agency (ARRS) [P1-0044]; Swedish Research Council (VR) [2014-4750, 2015-04391]; Swedish Government Strategic Research Area in Materials Science on Functional Materials at Linkoping University [2009 00971]; Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation [14.Y26.31.0005]