ABSTRACT
Introduction ............................................................................................................ 5
Stability Limit Conjecture..................................................................................... 6
Liquid-Liquid Phase Transition ......................................................................... 6
Singularity-Free Scenario...................................................................................... 7
Conclusion .............................................................................................................. 7
References ............................................................................................................... 8
Water has long been a source of fascination on account of its peculiar
physical properties. It is the only chemical compound that occurs naturally
in the solid, liquid and vapor phases. If sufficiently cold, it becomes more
compressible and less dense when cooled, and less viscous when
compressed. Its dielectric constant in the normal liquid range is unusually
large, and its melting and boiling temperatures are uncommonly high for a
non-metallic hydride. Liquid water’s anomalies become more pronounced
when it is cooled below the freezing point without crystallizing (super-
cooled) (Debenedetti, 2003). Speedy and Angell, (1976) showed that a variety
of thermodynamic and transport properties of water in the supercooled state
appear to diverge upon power-law extrapolation to 2458C, that is to say a
few degrees below the homogeneous nucleation temperature. Since then, an
important and uninterrupted body of experimental, theoretical and
computational work has sought to understand the physical properties of
cold, non-crystalline, metastable forms of water, and in particular to provide
a unifying theoretical framework within which both the microscopic origin
and the phase behavior implications of the apparent divergencies can be
understood. Although such a definitive interpretation is not yet available,
important progress has been made, and the number of thermodynamically
consistent interpretations that can explain experimental observations is very
small.