Quantum Ornstein-Zernike theory for two-temperature two-component plasmas

ZA Johnson and NR Shaffer and MS Murillo, PHYSICAL REVIEW E, 112, 025207 (2025).

DOI: 10.1103/5c29-kdx1

Laboratory plasma production almost always preferentially heats either the ions or electrons, leading to a two-temperature state. In this state, density functional theory molecular dynamic simulation is the state of the art for modeling bulk material properties. We construct a statistical mechanics model for the two-temperature limit that is theoretically consistent with the molecular dynamics method. We proceed to derive the electron-ion multitemperature quantum Ornstein-Zernike equations for the first time. This allows the construction of a twotemperature, two-component plasma model using the average atom from which we can compute bulk material properties at a fraction of the computation time of the two-temperature density functional theory simulation. The accuracy of the model is benchmarked against ion pair correlation and self-diffusion results from ab initio simulation. We proceed to compute the viscosity and ion thermal conductivity as a function of both ion and electron temperature.

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