Numerical studies of the dynamic isentropic loading of solid molecular hydrogen

Barker, et al., have proposed a dynamic technique for isentropically compressing solid molecular hydrogen specimens to multi-Mbar pressures. Because of the many novel features of this experimental technique, computational simulations of the experiment have been used extensively in the experimental design effort. Over the past two years, many such simulations have been performed. Our purpose in the present paper is to briefly summarize important conclusions resulting from this work. We briefly describe the equation of state of solid molecular hydrogen currently in use in our calculations. We are, of course, primarily interested in the uncertainties in the equation of state, and how these influence the calculations. We then discuss the computational approach and summarize some important conclusions of the work. Finally, we consider the relevance of these results to the proposed experiment.