Metallization of atomic solid hydrogen within the extended Hubbard model with renormalized Wannier wave functions

TL;DR

This paper investigates the metallization pressure of atomic solid hydrogen using an extended Hubbard model with renormalized Wannier functions, finding a critical pressure of 102 GPa and minimal zero-point motion influence.

Contribution

It introduces a refined model for atomic hydrogen metallization considering Gaussian approximations of orbitals and analyzes zero-point motion effects.

Findings

Critical metallization pressure is 102 GPa.

Zero-point motion has little effect on the pressure.

Refined modeling improves understanding of hydrogen metallization.

Abstract

We refer to our recent calculations (Eur. Phys. J. B, \textbf{86}, 252 (2013)) of metallization pressure of the three-dimensional simple-cubic crystal of atomic hydrogen and study the effect on the crucial results concocting from approximating the $1s$ Slater-type orbital function with a series of $p$ Gaussians. As a result, we find the critical metallization pressure $p_C = 102\ GPa$. The latter part is a discussion of the influence of zero-point motion on the stabilizing pressure. We show that in our model the estimate magnitude of zero-point motion carries a little effect on the critical metallization pressure at zero temperature.