A Model of Electron Transport in Dense Plasmas Spanning Temperature Regimes

Abstract

We present a new model of electron transport in warm and hot dense plasmas which combines the quantum Landau-Fokker-Planck equation with the concept of mean-force scattering. We obtain electrical and thermal conductivities across several orders of magnitude in temperature, from warm dense matter conditions to hot, nondegenerate plasma conditions, including the challenging crossover regime between the two. The small-angle approximation characteristic of Fokker-Planck collision theories is mitigated to good effect by the construction of accurate effective Coulomb logarithms based on mean-force scattering, which allows the theory to remain accurate even at low temperatures, as compared with high-fidelity quantum simulation results. Electron-electron collisions are treated on equal footing as electron-ion collisions. Their accurate treatment is found to be essential for hydrogen, and is expected to be important to other low-Z elements. We find that electron-electron scattering remains influential to the value of the thermal conductivity down to temperatures somewhat below the Fermi energy. The accuracy of the theory seems to falter only for the behavior of the thermal conductivity at very low temperatures due to a subtle interplay between the Pauli exclusion principle and the small-angle approximation as they pertain to electron-electron scattering. Even there, the model is in fair agreement with ab initio simulations.

arXiv comment17 pages, 7 figures (2 new, 1 updated)

References in corpus (21)

• Updated Electron-Conduction Opacities: The Impact on Low-Mass Stellar Models
• Charged Particle Motion in a Highly Ionized Plasma
• X-Ray Thomson scattering without the Chihara decomposition
• Stochastic Density Functional Theory at Finite Temperatures
• Density-functional calculations of transport properties in the non-degenerate limit and the role of electron-electron scattering
• Fast and accurate quantum molecular dynamics of dense plasmas across temperature regimes
• Correlation Effects on the Temperature Relaxation Rates in Dense Plasmas
• Mean Force Kinetic Theory: a Convergent Kinetic Theory for Weakly and Strongly Coupled Plasmas
• Ionic and electronic transport properties in dense plasmas by orbital-free density functional theory
• Optical conductivity of warm dense matter in wide frequency range within quantum statistical and kinetic approach
• Effective Potential Theory for Diffusion in Binary Ionic Mixtures
• Potential of mean force for electrical conductivity of dense plasmas
• Contribution of electron-atom collisions to the plasma conductivity of noble gases
• Resistivity in warm dense plasmas beyond the average-atom model
• Ab-initio simulations and measurements of the free-free opacity in Aluminum
• Temperature equilibration in a fully ionized plasma: electron-ion mass ratio effects
• Coulomb Log for Conductivity of Dense Plasmas
• On the Kubo-Greenwood Model for Electron Conductivity
• High Temperature Electronic Structure with KKR
• Correlations Between Conduction Electrons in Dense Plasmas
• The Barkas Effect in Plasma Transport

Cited by in corpus (10)

• Current challenges in the physics of white dwarf stars
• Review of the First Charged-Particle Transport Coefficient Comparison Workshop
• New Conductive Opacities for White Dwarf Envelopes
• A Kinetic Model for Electron-Ion Transport in Warm Dense Matter
• Electron conduction opacities at the transition between moderate and strong degeneracy: Uncertainties and impact on stellar models
• Electronic heat conductivity in a two-temperature state
• Exploring relaxation dynamics in warm dense plasmas by tailoring non-thermal electron distributions with a free electron laser
• Collisional stopping power of ions in warm dense matter
• Virial Expansion of the Electrical Conductivity of Hydrogen Plasmas
• A preliminary assessment of the sensitivity of uniaxially-driven fusion targets to flux-limited thermal conduction modeling