Abstract
Plate tectonics, which shapes the surface of Earth, is the result of solid-state convection in Earth’s mantle over billions of years. Simply driven by buoyancy forces, mantle convection is complicated by the nature of the convecting materials, which are not fluids but polycrystalline rocks. Crystalline materials can flow as the result of the motion of defects—point defects, dislocations, grain boundaries and so on. Reproducing in the laboratory the extreme deformation conditions of the mantle is extremely challenging. In particular, experimental strain rates are at least six orders of magnitude larger than in nature1. Here we show that the rheology of MgO at the pressure, temperature and strain rates of the mantle is accessible by multiscale numerical modelling starting from first principles and with no adjustable parameters. Our results demonstrate that extremely low strain rates counteract the influence of pressure. In the mantle, MgO deforms in the athermal regime and this leads to a very weak phase. It is only in the lowermost lower mantle that the pressure effect could dominate and that, under the influence of lattice friction, a viscosity of the order of 1021–1022 pascal seconds can be defined for MgO.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by ANR (Diup project).
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P.C. conceived the project. P.C. and Ph.C. designed the work. J.A. and Ph.C. performed numerical simulations. All authors discussed and interpreted the results. P.C. wrote the paper with feedback and contributions from all co-authors.
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The file contains Supplementary Text and Data, Supplementary Tables 1-4, Supplementary Figures 1-6 with legends and additional references. (PDF 411 kb)
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Cordier, P., Amodeo, J. & Carrez, P. Modelling the rheology of MgO under Earth’s mantle pressure, temperature and strain rates. Nature 481, 177–180 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature10687
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nature10687
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