Turnover of the melting line of highly compressed molecular hydrogen

Abstract

Conventional molecular dynamics simulation has been used to determine melting temperature of highly compressed classical molecular hydrogen in a wide range of pressures and temperatures using non-empirical atom-atom potentials approximation. It is shown that the raise of melting temperature with increasing pressure becomes more and more smooth and at megabar pressures its slope goes negative. We discuss the reasons of this turnover and analyze connection of this effect with the parameters of chemical bonding in H2.