Origin of temperature plateaus in laser-heated diamond anvil cell experiments

Many high-pressure high-temperature studies using laser-heated diamond cells have documented plateaus in the increase of temperature with increasing laser power or with time. By modeling heat transfer in typical laser-heated diamond anvil cell experiments, we demonstrate that latent heat due to melting or other phase transformation is unlikely to be the source of observed plateaus in any previously published studies, regardless of whether pulsed or continuous lasers were used. Rather, large increases (similar to 10-fold) in thermal conductivity can explain some of the plateaus, and modest increases in reflectivity (tens of percent) can explain any or all of them. Modeling also shows that the sub-microsecond timescale of heating employed in recent pulsed heating experiments is fast enough compared to heat transport into and through typical insulations, but too slow compared to heat transport into metallic laser absorbers themselves to allow the detection of a large plateau due to latent heat of fusion. Four new designs are suggested for future experiments that could use the simple observation of a latent heat-induced plateau to provide reliable high-pressure melting data. (C) 2012 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4729905]