Molecular dynamics simulation of electron–ion temperature relaxation in dense hydrogen: A scheme of truncated Coulomb potential

Abstract

Molecular dynamics (MD) simulations are performed to investigate the temperature relaxation between electrons and ions in a fully ionized, dense hydrogen plasma. We used HM (J. P. Hansen and I. R. McDonald) potential and introduced a truncated Coulomb interaction, which can avoid Coulomb catastrophe by choosing an appropriate cutting radius. The calculated results are compared with those from theoretical models (LS, GMS, BPS), whose applicability is also discussed. The effect of the interaction between ions and electrons on the temperature relaxation process is also investigated in the strong collision region. Finally, we discuss the effect of exchange interaction of electrons to the temperature relaxation.