Nonlocal electron heat transport under the non-Maxwellian distribution function

Abstract

In laser plasmas, the electron distribution function is not Maxwellian but super-Gaussian due to the inverse bremsstrahlung heating, and the electron heat transport is generally nonlocal because of the large Knudsen number. Starting from the Fokker–Planck equation, we develop a nonlocal electron heat transport model based on the non-Maxwellian distribution function. In our study, we follow the method in Schurtz et al. [Phys. Plasmas 7, 4238 (2000)] and derive a differential equation for calculating the nonlocal electron heat flux based on the non-Maxwellian distribution function. The numerical results show that the non-Maxwellian distribution function would reduce the nonlocal heat flux in the laser heated region. The preheat effect due to nonlocal electron heat transport in the conduction region is also reduced by the non-Maxwellian distribution function. This nonlocal electron heat transport model can be easily implemented in two-dimensional and three-dimensional hydrodynamics codes.