Electrical conductivity of a strongly correlated aluminium plasma

Intense, directional and tunable γ-ray emission via relativistic oscillating plasma mirror

A mechanism for high energy γ-photon generation based on laser-plasma accelerator is proposed. The laser pulse with a peak intensity of 10²²W/cm² accelerates the electron beam to GeV by the laser wakefield effect. A solid Aluminium target serves as a plasma mirror which is located at the rear side of a gas jet and reflects the laser pulse. High order harmonics are generated due to the Doppler effect experienced by the incident laser. The collisions of the reflected attosecond pulses and the energetic electron beam provide a large cross section for nonlinear Compton scattering and produce a collimated γ-photon flux. The mechanism generates GeV photons with a pulse duration given by the duration of the electron beam.

Thomas-Fermi Z-scaling laws and coupling stabilization for plasmas

Extending the well-known Thomas-Fermi Z-scaling laws to the Coulomb coupling parameter, we investigate the stabilization of the ionic coupling in isochoric heating [Clérouin et al., Phys. Rev. E 87, 061101 (2013)]. This stabilization is restricted to a domain in atomic number Z, temperature, and density, including strong limitations on high couplings, that can only be obtained for high-Z elements. Contact is made with recent isochoric heating experiments. The consequences for corresponding states with respect to ionic coupling are also quantified via orbital free molecular dynamics simulations. This opens avenues for future isochoric heating experiments.

Electrical conductivity of dense Al, Ti, Fe, Ni, Cu, Mo, Ta, and W plasmas

We report measurements of electrical conductivity of eight metals in the plasma state at densities ranging from 0.002 to 0.5 times solid density, and with internal energy from 2 to 30 kJ/gm. Data are presented as functions of internal energy and specific volume. Conductivity is observed to fall as the plasma expands for fixed internal energy, and for all but tantalum and titanium shows a minimum at approximately 0.01 times solid density, followed by an increase as the density decreases further.

Pressure and electrical resistivity measurements on hot expanded nickel: comparisons with quantum molecular dynamics simulations and average atom approaches

We present experimental results on pressure and resistivity on expanded nickel at a density of 0.1 g/cm3 and temperature of a few eV. These data, corresponding to the warm dense matter regime, are used to benchmark different theoretical approaches. A comparison is presented between fully three-dimensional quantum molecular dynamics (QMD) methods, based on density functional theory, with average atom methods, that are essentially one dimensional. In this regime the evaluation of the thermodynamic properties as well as electrical properties is difficult due to the concurrence of density and thermal effects which directly drive the metal-nonmetal transition. Experimental pressures and resistivities are given in a tabular form with temperatures deduced from QMD simulations.

Electrical conductivity of carbon plasma

The electrical conductivity of carbon plasmas is measured in the range of densities from about 0.6 solid density down to about 0.05 solid density, and reported for values of internal energy ranging from 2 to 22 kJ/gm . Plasmas are formed by rapid electrical discharge through thin graphite fibers immersed in a water bath. The pressure in the expanding plasma column is determined by use of a hydrodynamic model to describe the effect on the water surround. It is found that at constant internal energy per unit mass U, conductivity sigma varies with specific volume v as sigma = v(-alpha), where alpha is about 1 for U < 6 kJ gm , and rises to about 1.5 for U = 22 kJ gm .

Low-frequency plasma conductivity in the average-atom approximation

Low-frequency properties of a plasma are examined within the average-atom approximation, which presumes that scattering of a conducting electron on each atom takes place independently of other atoms. The relaxation time tau distinguishes a high-frequency region omegatau>1 , where the single-atom approximation is applicable explicitly, from extreme low frequencies omegatau<1 , where, naively, the single-atom approximation is invalid. A proposed generalization of the formalism, which takes into account many-atom collisions, is found to be accurate in all frequency regions, from omega=0 to omegatau>1 , reproducing the Ziman formula in the static limit, results based on the Kubo-Greenwood formula for high frequencies and satisfying the conductivity sum rule precisely. The correspondence between physical processes leading to the conventional Ohm's law and the infrared properties of QED is discussed. The suggested average-atom approach to frequency-dependent conductivity is illustrated by numerical calculations for an aluminum plasma in the temperature range 2-10eV .