Electric field induced nucleation: An alternative pathway to metallic hydrogen

TL;DR

This paper proposes electric field induced nucleation as a new method to achieve metallic hydrogen, deriving analytical models showing it can occur at lower pressures and within feasible temperature ranges.

Contribution

It introduces a novel mechanism for metallic hydrogen formation via electric fields, with analytical expressions for nucleation probabilities considering thermal and quantum effects.

Findings

Electric fields can induce insulator-metal transition at lower pressures.

Analytical models for thermal and quantum nucleation probabilities.

Feasible temperature and pressure conditions for metallic hydrogen formation.

Abstract

Electric field induced nucleation is introduced as a possible mechanism to realize a metallic phase of hydrogen. Analytical expressions are derived for the nucleation probabilities of both thermal and quantum nucleation in terms of material parameters, temperature, and the applied field. Our results show that the insulator-metal transition can be driven by an electric field within a reasonable temperature range and at much lower pressures than the current paradigm of P > 400 GPa. Both static and oscillating fields are considered and practical implementations are discussed.