Spotlight

Anne Davis

Anne Davis studies the deep Earth carbon cycle to better understand how carbon is stored and cycled through the Earth’s lowermost mantle and core. She conducts high pressure, high temperature experiments in the diamond anvil cell and uses a host of different experimental techniques including x-ray diffraction, vibrational spectroscopy, and energy-dispersive x-ray spectroscopy. Anne also runs ab initio molecular dynamics simulations on carbon-bearing melt compositions. She is particularly interested in the stability, melting behavior, and reactivity of carbonates in the lower mantle and at the core-mantle boundary. Previously, Anne has studied solid reactions between carbonates and metal alloys. Her work has determined that carbonates are stable carbon bearing phases in Earth’s lowermost mantle despite the potentially highly reducing conditions of the lower mantle. Currently, Anne is performing both experiments and calculations on carbonate-silicate-metal melts at core-mantle boundary conditions. The results of this work will inform our understanding of how carbon is stored in the deep Earth and could potentially explain interesting seismic signatures seen at the core-mantle boundary.