Abstract
Although there have been a number of theoretical and experimental investigations of the liquid state of carbon1-5, there remains fundamental disagreement about its material properties, particularly its electrical properties. Is liquid carbon metallic or insulating? Transient electrical conductivity measurements1 and melt-depth analysis of graphite excited by 30 ns laser pulses2, as well as first-principles molecular dynamics calculations3 suggest that the liquid phase of carbon is metallic. The claim for an insulating liquid phase is based on picosecond optical reflectivity measurements4 which show decreased surface reflectivity for the liquid phase when excited above a well-defined melting threshold. We have recently reported the first time-resolved femtosecond reflectivity measurements performed on highly oriented pyrolytic graphite (HOPG) in which both metallic (Δt < 10 ps) and insulating (Δt > 10 ps) behaviors were observed5.
© 1990 Optical Society of America
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