Carleton Author

Weisberg, Joel M.

Department

Physics and Astronomy

Journal Title

Science

Publication Date

2005

Month/Season

July

Volume No.

309

First Page

106

Last Page

110

Publisher

American Association for the Advancement of Science

File Name

017_Weisberg-Joel_DiscoveryOfPulsedOHMaserEmissionStimulatedByAPulsar.pdf

Abstract

Curium lies at the center of the actinide series and has a half-filled shell with seven 5f electrons spatially residing inside its radon core. As a function of pressure, curium exhibits five different crystallographic phases up to 100 gigapascals, of which all but one are also found in the preceding element, americium. We describe here a structure in curium, Cm III, with monoclinic symmetry, space group C2/c, found at intermediate pressures (between 37 and 56 gigapascals). Ab initio electronic structure calculations agree with the observed sequence of structures and establish that it is the spin polarization of curium’s 5f electrons that stabilizes Cm III. The results reveal that curium is one of a few elements that has a lattice structure stabilized by magnetism.

Rights Management

Carleton College does not own the copyright to this work and the work is available through the Carleton College Library following the original publisher's policies regarding self-archiving. For more information on the copyright status of this work, refer to the current copyright holder.

RoMEO Color

Green

Preprint Archiving

Yes

Postprint Archiving

Yes

Publisher PDF Archiving

No

Contributing Organization

Carleton College

Type

Article

Format

application/pdf

Language

English

DOI

10.1126/science.1112494

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