First-Principles Studies on the Stopping Power of Warm Dense Plasmas with Time‑Dependent Orbital-Free Density Functional Theory

Electronic transport properties of warm dense plasmas, such as electrical/thermal conductivities and stopping power, are of particular interest to geophysics, planetary science, astrophysics, and inertial confinement fusion (ICF). One important example is the a-particle stopping power of dense deuterium–tritium (DT) plasmas, which must be precisely known for current small-margin ICF target designs to ignite. To precisely determine the stopping power of warm dense plasmas, we have developed a time-dependent orbital-free density functional theory (TD‑OF-DFT) method for ab initio investigations. Our TD-OF-DFT calculations have well reproduced the recent well characterized stopping power experiment in warm dense beryllium. For a-particle stopping in warm and solid density DT plasmas, our ab initio TD-OF-DFT simulations show a lower stopping power up to ~25% compared with two stopping-power models widely used in the high-energy-density physics community.