Tests for Krook model for nonlocal heat transport in laser produced plasmas

A Krook model has recently been proposed [1] for solving the problem of electron energy transport in laser produced plasmas. In this work, we report on comparisons of this model with 1) a more complete Fokker-Planck model and 2) an experiment performed at NRL [2]. A simple test problem solved with a Fokker-Planck code was first considered by Matte and Virmont [3]. It consists of a pure heat transport problem in a uniform plasma slab between two thermostatic walls at different temperatures. The normalized slab length (L/$\lambda$ where $\lambda$ is the average electron mean free path) varies from order 1 to a few hundreds. The comparison with experiment involves the back side temperature measurement behind a 58 $\mu$m plastic foil after the passage of a laser-produced shock wave. Results from these two comparisons will be presented and outline for further work will be discussed. \newline [1] W.Manheimer, D.Colombant and V.Goncharov, submitted to Phys. of Plasmas \newline [2] E.McLean et al., Optics Comm. 166, 141 (1999) \newline [3] J.P.Matte and J. Virmont, Phys. Rev. Letters 49, 1936 (1982)