Constraining Earth's core composition from inner core nucleation.

Alfred Wilson , Chris Davies , Andrew Walker , Dario Alfè 

The composition of Earth’s core is a fundamental property of the Earth’s deep interior, defining its present structure and long term thermal and magnetic evolution. However, the composition of the core is not well understood, with several combinations of light elements being able to satisfy the traditional constraints from cosmochemistry, core formation and seismology.
The traditional view of inner core formation does not include the necessity for liquids to be supercooled to below their melting point before freezing.

Attempts to calculate the magnitude of this supercooling have found that several simple core compositions are incompatible with inner core nucleation. Through molecular dynamics simulations, we show that nucleation from an Fe(1-x)C(x=0.1-0.15) composition is compatible with a range of geophysical constraints. Whilst not a complete description of core chemistry, our results demonstrate that inner core nucleation places strong constrain on the composition of Earth’s core that may allow discrimination between previously identified potential compositions.