Thermalization simulations of strongly/weakly coupled mixtures

In plasmas where certain pairs of species are strongly coupled and others weakly coupled, the assumptions that can be made in deriving simplified kinetic models are often unclear. Molecular dynamics simulation is a robust tool for probing physics in these regimes. In this study, the particle-particle particle-mesh (PPPM) molecular dynamics code ddcMD is used to simulate temperature relaxation of electron, proton, and Argon-doped mixtures. Thermalization rates are calculated and compared to theoretical models. The practicality of a simplified treatment of electrons as a Langevin bath is also explored.