Investigation of Nonlocal Electron Transport in High-Energy-Density Plasmas Using Ab Initio Methods

Nonlocal electron transport is key to determining laser-target coupling for direct-drive inertial confinement fusion (ICF). We have utilized a combination of the mixed Kohn–Sham (mKS)^[1,2] and orbital-free (OF)^[3] approaches to time-dependent density functional theory (TD-DFT) and various analytical methods to calculate the nonlocal electron mean free path (MFP) in warm/hot dense CH “conduction-zone” plasmas relevant to ICF conditions. We will use the results from these TD-mKS-DFT and TD-OF-DFT calculations to develop an analytical model for the electron MFP and then apply this model to radiation-hydrodynamic simulations of ICF implosions. In this way, we hope to close the gap between theory and experiment for laser–target coupling that is currently evidenced by soft x-ray self-emission measurements. The expected results will improve the predictive capability for laser–target coupling, hot-spot formation, and burn-wave propagation in ICF simulations.

[1] A. J. White et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 125, 055002 (2020).

[2] A. J. White et al., J. Phys.: Condens. Matter 34, 174001 (2022).

[3] Y. H. Ding et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 121, 145001 (2018).