Illusions of phase coexistence: Comments on "Metastable liquid-liquid transition ..." by J. C. Palmer et al., Nature 510, 385 (2014)

Abstract

The recent paper cited above claims that a molecular simulation of one specific model of supercooled water establishes a stable interface separating two metastable liquid phases, which would imply the existence of metastable two-liquid criticality for that model. Here, we note that this claim conflicts with fundamental principles and with earlier work published in the \textit{Journal of Chemical Physics}, and we show that the claim is unjustified by the data put forward to support the conclusion. Other technical problems are also noted.