Program > Browse abstracts by speaker > Lin Yanhao

The oxygen fugacity of Earth's mantle is also thought to have increased over accretion, core formation and evolution due to increasingly oxidated impactors and lower mantle self-oxidation [1-4], but the influence of this on the solidus of deep primitive mantle materials has not been well constrained. We assess the effect of oxygen fugacity on conditions at the bottom of a magma ocean by experimentally determining the solidus of mantle pyrolite at the pressures conditions ranging from the mantle transition zone to the top of the lower mantle at high oxygen fugacities, and we find that over this pressure range the solidus in experiments conducted under oxidising conditions is at least few hundreds degree Celsius lower than in experiments conducted under more reducing conditions[5]. Given the strong effect of oxygen fugacity on mantle melting, models of core formation and the thermal evolution of the early Earth should be re-evaluated.