Efficient Model for Electronic Transport in High Energy-Density Plasmas

A model for the efficient calculation of electronic transport coefficients in dense plasma mixtures is presented. The model makes use of cross sections to capture strong scattering effects, pseudopotentials for core electron physics, and both response functions and structure factors to account for many-body effects. These models are kept minimal in complexity to both reduce the number of ad hoc parameters as well as allow for a more straightforward generalization to multi-component systems; however, the model is also wide-ranging enough to span the parameter space and generate multiple transport coefficients self-consistently without the use of a Coulomb logarithm. In particular, electronic viscosities, stopping powers, and electrical and thermal conductivities are calculated together from the same microphysical input quantities. Comparisons with datasets that resulted from a recent transport coefficient workshop and molecular dynamics simulations are made, where strong agreement is often found with higher-fidelity models despite the simplicity of the model [1, 2].

[1] Grabowski, P. E., et al., “Review of the First Charged-Particle Transport Coefficient Comparison Workshop”, High Energy Density Phys., 37, 100905 (2020).

[2] Stanton, L. G. and Murillo, M. S., "Efficient Model for Electronic Transport in High Energy-Density Matter", Phys. Plasmas, 28, 082301 (2021).