Parameterized model for anomalous transport in pulsed power inertial confinement fusion experiments

Collisionless plasmas in pulsed power inertial confinement fusion experiments give rise to parasitic currents and thereby limit our ability to scale Z-pinches to higher energy densities. Accurately predicting the anomalous transport properties of these plasmas is critical for understanding power flow and optimizing experimental design. Importantly, transport properties like resistivity and heating are strongly influenced by nonlinear microturbulence, which is difficult to characterize. Lower hybrid drift instabilities, produced by plasma acceleration, are a leading-candidate driver of microturbulence. Through a series of GPU-accelerated Vlasov-Poisson simulations, we show that anomalous transport produced by the instability can be well estimated using a parameterized analytic model. The model is based on linear theory and quasilinear theory and leverages power law analysis and differential evolution optimization. The model expresses nonlinear properties of the instability in terms of linear stage properties and dimensionless parameters that define equilibrium conditions. It is shown that the anomalous collision frequency and resistivity are proportional to the linear theory growth rate, and species heating rates can be calculated using the phase velocity of the fastest growing mode. The resulting analytic description can efficiently capture the bulk effect of kinetic physics in the context of magnetohydrodynamic simulations.