Abstract
Seismic observations suggest that the Earth’s inner core has a complex
structure (e.g., the isotropic layer at the top, innermost inner core,
and hemispherical dichotomy). These characteristics are believed to
reflect the history of dynamics and temperature profile of the inner
core. One critical physical property is the inner core’s thermal
conductivity. The thermal conductivity of metals can be estimated from
their electrical resistivity using the Wiedemann-Franz law. Recent
high-pressure and temperature experiments revealed that the temperature
dependence of electrical resistivity is small for Fe-Si alloys. The
small temperature coefficient means that it is essential to determine
the impurity resistivity of Fe alloys to constrain the inner core’s
thermal conductivity. Therefore, this study systematically calculated
the impurity resistivities of 4- and 6-component alloys at inner core
pressure by combining the Korringa-Kohn-Rostoker method with the
coherent potential approximation. As a result, we obtained the thermal
conductivity of the inner core to be 150-263 W/m/K. The inner core
cannot maintain thermal convection with such a high thermal
conductivity, resulting in a flat temperature profile. In materials
science, it is widely known that polycrystals soften suddenly at high
temperatures a few percent below their melting temperature. If such a
pre-melting occurs in the inner core, the flat temperature profile due
to high thermal conductivity causes variations in the attenuation within
the inner core. This may explain the observation that the upper inner
core is more strongly attenuated than the innermost inner core.