Ultrahigh-pressure crystallographic passage towards metallic hydrogen
The structural evolution of molecular hydrogen H2 under multi-megabar compression and its relation to atomic metallic hydrogen is a key unsolved problem in condensed-matter physics. Although dozens of crystal structures have been proposed by theory1, 2, 3–4, only one, the simple hexagonal-close-packed (hcp) structure of only spherical disordered H2, has been previously confirmed in experiments5. T
