Fast and Accurate Transport Coefficients for Dense Plasma Applications

Mixing of high-$Z$ ablator materials into thermonuclear fuel can spoil burn conditions. Understanding the impact, and controlling the mixing process requires a detailed knowledge of transport coefficients across wide plasma regimes; the ability to rapidly compute these properties in dense plasma mixtures remains a challenge. Existing microscopic models such as Kohn-Sham density functional theory molecular dynamics (KS-DFT-MD) and pair-potential molecular dynamics (PP-MD) can determine these transport properties; however, relatively speaking, the former requires many CPU hours while the latter typically does not. We use the Vienna Ab-initio Simulation Package (VASP) to generate KS-DFT-MD data for force matching with the Yukawa and EGS [1] pair-potentials; we see a preliminary speedup of $10^{5}$ times. We plan to use the inexpensive PP-MD to aid in the design and interpretation of Z Machine experiments at Sandia National Laboratories. SNL is managed and operated by NTESS under DOE NNSA contract DE-NA0003525 SAND Number: SAND2019-7663 A