Energy Landscape Concepts for Chemical Systems under Extreme Conditions

Abstract

Traditionally, energy landscape studies of chemical systems deal with an isolated system with no interaction with the environment except possibly non-zero pressure and temperature. This changes drastically, if we consider materials under extreme conditions, since now the interaction with the environment plays a central role. In this work, we present extensions and generalizations of the energy landscape paradigm to chemical systems that strongly interact with their environments. The focus is on the general concepts involved, where we discuss the way to incorporate general external fields, e.g., mechanical stresses, electric and magnetic fields, and fluxes, e.g., electric and thermal currents, and analyze the issue of time-dependent energy landscapes. Finally, possible applications of energy landscape concepts in a variety of chemical and physical systems in strong contact with the environment are discussed, and first examples of landscape studies of materials under extreme conditions are given.