Exploring water and other liquids at negative pressure

Frederic Caupin (1, 2) , Arnaud Arvengas (1) , Kristina Davitt (1) , Mouna El Mekki-Azouzi (2, 3) , Kirill Shmulovich (4) , Claire Ramboz (3) , David A. Sessoms (5) , Abraham D Stroock (6)

1 LPS - Laboratoire de Physique Statistique de l'ENS
2 LPMCN - Laboratoire de Physique de la Matière Condensée et Nanostructures
3 ISTO - Institut des Sciences de la Terre d'Orléans - UMR7327
4 Institute of Experimental Mineralogy
5 School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
6 School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering

Water is famous for its anomalies, most of which become dramatic in the supercooled region, where the liquid is metastable with respect to the solid. Another metastable region has been hitherto less studied: the region where the pressure is negative. Here we review the work on the liquid in the stretched state. Characterization of the properties of the metastable liquid before it breaks by nucleation of a vapour bubble (cavitation) is a challenging task. The recent measurement of the equation of state of the liquid at room temperature down to 26 MPa opens the way to more detailed information on water at low density. The threshold for cavitation in stretched water has also been studied by several methods. A puzzling discrepancy between experiments and theory remains unexplained. To evaluate how specific this behaviour is to water, we discuss the cavitation data on other liquids. We conclude with a description of the ongoing work in our groups.

Domains: Geochemistry; Global Changes

Frederic Caupin, Arnaud Arvengas, Kristina Davitt, Mouna El Mekki-Azouzi, Kirill Shmulovich, et al.. Exploring water and other liquids at negative pressure. Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter, 2012, 24, 284110 (7 p.). ⟨10.1088/0953-8984/24/28/284110⟩. ⟨insu-00726437⟩