Oxford Centre for High Energy Density Science (OxCHEDS)

Abstract:

We demonstrate experimentally that the relativistic electron flow in a dense plasma can be efficiently confined and guided in targets exhibiting a high-resistivity-core-low-resistivity-cladding structure analogous to optical waveguides. The relativistic electron beam is shown to be confined to an area of the order of the core diameter (50μm), which has the potential to substantially enhance the coupling efficiency of electrons to the compressed fusion fuel in the Fast Ignitor fusion in full-scale fusion experiments. © 2010 The American Physical Society.

Abstract:

We calculate the static structure factor of dense multi-component plasmas. Large scale ab initio finite-temperature DFT molecular dynamics simulations are performed in order to cover the region where a consistent quantum treatment for the electrons is inevitable. Especially, the behavior at small wave numbers k can be inferred from the relation to the isothermal compressibility. Alternatively, the static structure factor is obtained by solving the integral equations for the pair correlation functions within the hypernetted chain (HNC) scheme. For this purpose we derive new effective two-particle quantum potentials for the interactions between the charge carriers from the full two-particle Slater sum by accounting for bound states. Comparison to the ab initio molecular dynamics simulations enables us to determine the short-range behavior of the effective electron-ion quantum potentials. Results for the static structure factor are presented for beryllium plasmas at solid density and at threefold compression. © 2009 Elsevier B.V.