Nuclear Quantum Effects in Metallic Hydrogen

Describing the behavior of hydrogen over a wide range of thermodynamic conditions with quantitative accuracy is critical to many areas of physics. Dense and metallic hydrogen is especially interesting, because of the remarkable physics that it is expected to exhibit. The theory of hydrogen is challenging, however. The light nuclear mass, with large quantum motion, coupled with subtle effects in electronic structure are not easily handled. We have developed a computational method capable of rigorously accounting for these effects (in the atomic metallic phase) to an accuracy of better than 1%. In this presentation, this method will be described. Potential applications will be discussed. As an example, calculated zero-point energies of candidate structures of atomic metallic hydrogen will be presented. Implications for the phase diagram will be discussed.