IS THERE A 2ND CRITICAL-POINT IN LIQUID WATER

The supercooled and stretched regions of the phase diagram of simulated liquid water are investigated by calculating the equation of state of the ST2 and TIP4P pair-potentials. We find that simulated water does not display a re-entrant spinodal and that the projection of the density maximum line in the plane of pressure and temperature becomes positively sloped on stretching. The well-known anomalous behavior of supercooled water is tentatively associated with the existence of an inaccessible critical point. Evidence is presented that suggests the association of this new critical point with the transition between low density and high density amorphous solid water. We show how the observed transformation behavior of the two forms of amorphous solid water can be explained in terms of a first order phase transition, via a consideration of the limits of metastability associated with this kind of transition, and support this interpretation with simulations of the amorphous solid. We therefore propose a phase diagram which accounts for the behavior of both liquid and amorphous solid water.