Thermal transport modeling of laser-irradiated low-Z spheres with HYDRA

High-intensity (10^14 - 10^15 W/cm2) laser-irradiated sphere experiments are used to study X-ray conversion efficiencies and electron thermal transport properties in gold and other high-Z materials. In order to highlight the thermal transport modeling, we focus on lower-Z materials in which non-LTE kinetics is easier and has less impact on observables. We assess the effect of the electron thermal transport model (e.g. flux-limited Spitzer-Harm, nonlocal electron multi-group diffusion [1][2]) on laser absorption, coronal electron temperatures and electron densities in the Be-Sphere system, and compare these calculations with recent experiments on OMEGA. In addition, to study the thermal conduction sensitivity variations between elements we extend our analysis to additional cases such as Al and Cu.

[1] Schurtz et. al, Phys. Plasmas 7, 4238 (2000)

[2] Brodrick et. al, Phys. Plasmas 24, 092309 (2017)