Interspecies radiative transition in warm and superdense plasma mixtures.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 32332785.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-020-15916-3 and PMC identifier 7181684.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Superdense plasmas widely exist in planetary interiors and astrophysical objects such as brown-dwarf cores and white dwarfs. How atoms behave under such extreme-density conditions is not yet well understood, even in single-species plasmas. Here, we apply thermal density functional theory to investigate the radiation spectra of superdense iron-zinc plasma mixtures at mass densities of ρ = 250 to 2000 g cm<sup>-3</sup> and temperatures of kT = 50 to 100 eV, accessible by double-shell-target implosions. Our ab initio calculations reveal two extreme atomic-physics phenomena-firstly, an interspecies radiative transition; and, secondly, the breaking down of the dipole-selection rule for radiative transitions in isolated atoms. Our first-principles calculations predict that for superdense plasma mixtures, both interatomic radiative transitions and dipole-forbidden transitions can become comparable to the normal intra-atomic Kα-emission signal. These physics phenomena were not previously considered in detail for extreme high-density plasma mixtures at super-high energy densities.