Electron-proton relaxation in hot-dense plasmas with a screened quantum statistical potential.

Abstract

Modeling the nonequilibrium process between ions and electrons is of great importance in laboratory fusion ignition, laser-plasma interaction, and astrophysics. For hot and dense plasmas, theoretical descriptions of Coulomb collisions remain complicated due to quantum effect at short distances and screening effect at long distances. In this paper, we propose an analytical screened quantum statistical potential that takes into account both the short-range quantum diffraction effect and the long-range screening effect. By implementing the newly developed potential into the binary scattering framework, the electron-proton temperature relaxation in hot-dense hydrogen plasmas is investigated. In both the classical and quantum limits, analytical expressions for the Coulomb logarithm have been obtained, which are generally embedded in an asymptotic matching formula. Quantitative comparisons with molecular dynamics simulations and recent OMEGA experiments demonstrate that the present modeling is well suited to describe the temperature relaxation process between electrons and ions in hot-dense plasmas.