Study on laser-irradiated Au plasmas by detailed configuration accounting atomic physics

Abstract

We coupled the one-dimensional multi-group radiation hydrodynamic code RDMG with the MBDCA atomic physics package, which uses the Matrix-Block Method to solve the coupled rate equations of the Detailed Configuration Accounting (DCA) non-LTE model, and applied the coupled code RDMG-MBDCA with different flux limiters fe to simulate a laser-irradiated CH-tamped Au disk experiment at the SGII laser facility. From our simulations, we found that a higher fe leads to faster laser ablation, earlier x-ray breakout time with a higher maximum x-ray flux, and an x-ray spectrum with a higher intensity. However, for the same fe, the simulation from RDMG with the DCA model shows a slower electron thermal conduction between the laser absorption region and the electron thermal conduction than that with the average-atom model. From our investigation, we can say that it is the lower ionization from DCA in the electron thermal conduction region which causes the slower electron thermal conduction between the two regions. The electron thermal conduction from DCA can be increased remarkably when the atomic processes of dielectronic capture and auto-ionization are turned off in simulation. This indicates that the atomic transition rate coefficients are important in determining the heat conduction and the plasma status for laser generated plasmas.