2018/11/30 by G. Röpke, Gerd Röpke, D. Blaschke +10 · 49 citations
Chemistry · Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Atomic and Molecular Physics #Atomic physics #Blocking (statistics) #Condensed matter physics #Debye #Degeneracy (biology) #Degenerate energy levels #Electron #Ion #Ionization #Ionization energy #Laser-induced spectroscopy and plasma #Mass Spectrometry Techniques and Applications #Nuclear physics #Opacity #Pauli exclusion principle #Physics #Plasma #Quantum mechanics #Statistics #nucl-th #physics.plasm-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physreve.99.033201
published in Physical review. E 99(3), 033201 (American Physical Society) · 15 pages, 3 figures
arxiv created 2018/11/30 · openalex publication_date 2019/03/04 · arxiv updated 2019/03/13 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
New facilities explore warm dense matter (WDM) at conditions with extreme densities (exceeding ten times condensed matter densities) so that electrons are degenerate even at temperatures of 10-100 eV. Whereas in the nondegenerate region correlation effects such as Debye screening are relevant for the ionization potential depression (IPD), new effects have to be considered in degenerate plasmas. In addition to the Fock shift of the self-energies, the bound-state Pauli blocking becomes important with increasing density. Standard approaches to IPD such as Stewart-Pyatt and widely used opacity tables (e.g., OPAL) do not contain Pauli blocking effects for bound states. The consideration of degeneracy effects leads to a reduction of the ionization potential and to a higher degree of ionization. As an example, we present calculations for the ionization degree of carbon plasmas at T = 100 eV and extreme densities up to 40 g/cm3, which are relevant to experiments that are currently scheduled at the National Ignition Facility.