Plastic deformation of superionic water ices

Work by Filipe Matusalem, Jéssica Santos Rego, and Maurice de Koning (Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Brazil), modeling the plastic-flow behavior of superionic water ice. From DFT shear-strength estimates the study builds a machine-learning interatomic potential to determine dislocation-glide velocities with LAMMPS; the resulting effective viscosities suggest these phases may flow much more easily than expected, possibly affecting the interior dynamics of the ice giants Neptune and Uranus.