Thermoelectric Transport with an 8-Moment Plasma Model in PERSEUS

The PERSEUS code originally solved a 5-moment 2-fluid Extended MHD model including electron inertia and Hall terms in the Generalized Ohm's Law. However, this model lacks non-equilibrium transport such as heat flow and thermoelectric effects. In the high temperature and density regimes found in High Energy Density plasmas, these higher-moment transport phenomena may have substantial influences on the evolution of the system.

An 8-moment model has been developed that inherently includes non-equilibrium transport and retains conservation form of the equations. The closure is handled by ansatz that the distribution function is completely described by only 8 degrees of freedom, with a functional form that gives consistent definitions for the moment variables. This results in the non-factorable parts of the third-rank (heat flow) and fourth-rank tensor moments being identically zero. Transport effects such as thermal conductivity and Nernst are shown to be present in this formulation, while maintaining the time derivative terms that give physical propagation speeds. Results from 1D validation tests will be presented.