Validation of Non-Local Electron Transport Approaches, Application to Shock Ignition

For laser-plasma interactions at moderate intensities the conduction of heat cannot be captured by the classical Spitzer-H\"arm expression and an accurate treatment for non-local electron transport is necessary. A suitable method needs to discriminate between local electrons, that behave in accordance to the classical thermal conduction, and non-local electrons, that have very long mean free paths and diffuse energy all over the physical domain. Two widely known and promising schemes are examined in detail: SNB [Schurtz et al. PoP (2000)] and CMG [Manheimer et al. PoP (2008)]. Both models have been implemented in the hydrodynamic code DUED and benchmarked against the fully kinetic Vlasov-Fokker-Plank codes OSHUN and KETS. Both schemes calculate the right amount of flux in the limit of steep temperature gradients, and for the test problem of hot-spot relaxation they are both generally well-behaved at hydrodynamic time-scales ($\sim 30 \tau_{\rm ei}$). However, at kinetic time-scales (up to $\sim 30 \tau_{\rm ei}$) the SNB model better approximates the kinetic solution. 1D and 2D shock ignition simulations will be presented and the role of non-local effects in the implosion and ignition stages will be discussed.