The sound speed in Yukawa one component plasmas across coupling regimes

Abstract

A many-body system of charged particles interacting via a pairwise Yukawa potential, the so-called Yukawa One Component Plasma (YOCP) is a good approximation for a variety of physical systems. Such systems are completely characterized by two parameters; the screening parameter, $\kappa$, and the nominal coupling strength, $\Gamma$. It is well known that the collective spectrum of the YOCP is governed by a longitudinal acoustic mode, both in the weakly and strongly coupled regimes. In the long-wavelength limit the linear term in the dispersion (\textit{i.e.} $\omega =sk$) defines the sound speed $s$. We study the evolution of this latter quantity from the weak through the strong coupling regimes by analyzing the Dynamic Structure Function $S(k,\omega )$ in the low frequency domain. Depending on the values of $\Gamma$ and $\kappa$ and $w=s/v_{\text{th}}$, (\textit{i.e.} the ratio between the phase velocity of the wave and thermal speed of the particles) we identify five domains in the $(\kappa ,\Gamma )$ parameter space in which the physical behavior of the YOCP exhibits different features. The competing physical processes are the collective Coulomb like vs. binary collision dominated behavior and the individual particle motion vs. quasi-localization. Our principal tool of investigation is Molecular Dynamics (MD) computer simulation from which we obtain $S(k,\omega )$. Recent improvements in the simulation technique have allowed us to obtain a large body of high quality data in the range $\Gamma =\{0.1-10,000\}$ and $\kappa =\{0.5-5\}$. The theoretical results based on various models are compared in order to see which one provides the most cogent physical description and the best agreement with MD data in the different domains.

arXiv comment33 pages, 12 figures

References in corpus (6)

• Dynamical correlations and collective excitations of Yukawa liquids
• Coupling Strength in Coulomb and Yukawa One-Component Plasmas
• Fluid approach to evaluate sound velocity in Yukawa systems (complex plasmas)
• Practical expressions for the internal energy and pressure of Yukawa fluids
• Asymptotic decay of pair correlations in a Yukawa fluid
• Density Fluctuations in the Yukawa One Component Plasma: An accurate model for the dynamical structure factor

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Revealing the supercritical dynamics of dusty plasmas and their liquid-like to gas-like dynamical crossover
• Dispersion relations of Yukawa fluids at weak and moderate coupling
• Description of longitudinal modes in moderately coupled Yukawa systems with the static local field correction
• Anomalous behavior of plasma response functions at strong coupling
• Variational approach to Yukawa fluids. II. Instantaneous elastic moduli and sound velocities