Search for the Origin of the Anomalous Properties of Water

Water is the most important liquid for our existence and plays an essential role in physics, chemistry, biology and geoscience. At the same it is the liquid that has the most unusual properties in comparison to a normal simple liquid.

The underlaying question is what is the origin of all the anomalies in water that becomes accelerated in the supercooled regime.

There have been proposed several theoretical hypotheses and the most favourable is that there exist two liquid phases of water with a critical point in the temperature-pressure phase diagram of water that also is metastable towards ice. The challenge is to experimentally test the hypothesis at conditions of rapid ice formation.

We will heat amorphous ices rapidly up to temperatures into the liquid regime or cool micron sized droplets fast and then use ultrafast x-ray scattering from x-ray lasers to probe the liquid state before it can crystalize into ice. The goal is to establish if a critical point exists and at what temperature and pressure.

Furthermore, can the position of the critical point be strongly affected by nuclear quantum effects? Could fluctuations from the critical point affect the liquid as it approaches the glass transition.

Lastly, can we establish if a fragile-to-strong transition exists in the deep supercooled regime that also appear as a dynamic anomaly from the critical point.