Fokker-Planck Simulations of Transport in Magnetized Hohlraum Gas-Fill Plasma

Conditions in the heated `gas-fill' plasma in ICF hohlraums mean that the collisional mean-free-path is a significant fraction of the important scale-lengths. This suggests that non-local transport effects are prevalent. However, significant levels of $\nabla $n$\times \nabla $T magnetic fields have been observed in Nova scale hohlraums. Conceivably, strong magnetization could mitigate non-locality. We report on Fokker-Planck simulations showing the effect of magnetic fields on thermal transport. They were carried out using IMPACT [Kingham {\&} Bell, J. Comput. Phys. \textbf{194}, 1 (2004)] and focus in on a representative region of plasma underneath a typical heater beam. The results suggest that the usual figure of merit for non-local effects in the absence of magnetic fields, k$\lambda _{c}$ (where $\lambda _{c}=\surd {\rm g}\lambda _{ei}{\rm g}\lambda _{ee})$, can be extended in an appropriate way to magnetized plasma. This work complements recent analytical treatments of non-local heat flow in magnetized plasma [Brantov \textit{et al.} Phy. Plasmas \textbf{10}, 4633 (2003); Frolov \textit{et al.} Submitted to Phys. Plasmas] and additionally includes phenomena (e.g. Nernst advection) not present in those models.