Theory of dense hydrogen

Equations of state for molecular and metallic hydrogen are calculated in an accurate and comparable manner by using the density-functional method applied to static lattices. By isolating the electronic energies in this way, attention can be drawn to the relative importance of the protonic degrees of freedom. From the equation-of-state results it can be concluded that a remnant molecular pairing is preferred in a band-overlap metallic state, complete dissociation occurring only at very high densities. An accurate determination of the pressure needed to achieve complete dissociation is shown to require a self-consistent treatment of electron and proton degrees of freedom.