Understanding the Earth’s interior requires knowledge of the structure and properties of its constituent materials, i.e. minerals, melts and fluids, and their dependence on pressure, temperature, and composition. In the last decade several technological developments have increased not only the pressure and temperature ranges for the in situ study of minerals, but also have improved the resolution and the accuracy of such measurements. At the same time, computational approaches to characterize the properties of Earth materials have become much more powerful due to continuous extension of computing resources and due to methodological developments. The predictive power, especially of first-principles techniques, provides a means to extend investigations to experimentally inaccessible conditions. For this session we invite contributions from different fields of Earth materials research, which includes new experimental studies of minerals at high pressure and temperature conditions and simulations of Earth materials in any relevant pressure and temperature range. Contributions that link experiment and simulation are welcome.

Support: The European Mineralogical Union (EMU) [http://www.univie.ac.at/Mineralogie/EMU/] has sponsored travel awards for young scientists contributing mineralogically based contributions to this session.

Solicited speakers:
John Brodholt, University College London (UK)
Patrick Cordier, University of Lille (France)
Xavier Gonze, Universite Catholique de Louvain (Belgium)
Ronald Miletich, University of Heidelberg (Germany)
Carmen Sanchez-Valle, ETH Zurich (Switzerland)