Key words: supercritical water, hydrogen bonds, clusters, percolation threshold
Numerical simulation techniques are used to study transformations of hydrogen-bonded water clusters at the transition to the supercritical state. It is demonstrated that the destruction of the infinite hydrogen-bonded cluster, i.e. passing the percolation threshold, is taking place in the subcritical region. At critical temperature structural fluctuations become so significant that the fluid behaves as a system with two types of ordering. The existence of tetrahedral clusters in supercritical water is confirmed at high pressure only.
doi:10.1134/S1990793112080155