Atomic kinetics calculations of complex highly-charged ions in plasmas in non-local thermodynamic equilibrium by using a Monte-Carlo approach

Abstract

A new calculation of atomic kinetics of multiple-charged tungsten ions in a high temperature plasma in the non-local thermodynamic equilibrium (nLTE) based on the Markov chain Monte-Carlo (MCMC) method is presented. It is shown that the fractional ion abundance and the resulting mean charge of the plasma can be calculated with much lower computational time compared to conventional methods. The present method can be easily parallelized and is applicable to larger problems, such as modeling coupled atomic processes and radiation hydrodynamics.