Fast Non-Adiabatic Warm Dense Matter Simulation

When constructing modern simulations of Warm Dense plasma, one must make compromises in accuracy so that the calculations are computationally accessible. To access long-time ion correlations, the Born-Oppenheimer approximation is usually relied upon so that simulations can be performed at the time scale of the ions.

However, the neglect of electron dynamics through the Born-Oppenheimer approximation has been shown to produce errors in the ion dynamics that are difficult to quantify and correct.

We present a new simulation method for quantum plasmas that goes beyond this approximation, by treating electrons and ions as thermally-averaged Bohmian trajectories.

Due to a greatly reduced computational expense, we are able to treat long-time ion dynamics of large systems while also treating electrons fully dynamically. We thereby fill a void where current methods require a prohibitive computational cost.