Relativistic opacities for astrophysical applications

Fontes, Christopher John; Fryer, Christopher Lee; Hungerford, Aimee L.; Hakel, Peter; Colgan, James Patrick; Kilcrease, David Parker; Sherrill, Manalo Edgar

doi:10.1016/j.hedp.2015.06.002

Title: Relativistic opacities for astrophysical applications

Journal Article · Mon Jun 29 00:00:00 EDT 2015 · High Energy Density Physics

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.hedp.2015.06.002· OSTI ID:1329688

Fontes, Christopher John ^[1]; Fryer, Christopher Lee ^[1]; Hungerford, Aimee L. ^[1]; Hakel, Peter ^[1]; Colgan, James Patrick ^[1]; Kilcrease, David Parker ^[1]; Sherrill, Manalo Edgar ^[1]

Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)

Here, we report on the use of the Los Alamos suite of relativistic atomic physics codes to generate radiative opacities for the modeling of astrophysically relevant plasmas under local thermodynamic equilibrium (LTE) conditions. The atomic structure calculations are carried out in fine-structure detail, including full configuration interaction. Three example applications are considered: iron opacities at conditions relevant to the base of the solar convection zone, nickel opacities for the modeling of stellar envelopes, and samarium opacities for the modeling of light curves produced by neutron star mergers. In the first two examples, comparisons are made between opacities that are generated with the fully and semi-relativistic capabilities in the Los Alamos suite of codes. As expected for these highly charged, iron-peak ions, the two methods produce reasonably similar results, providing confidence that the numerical methods have been correctly implemented. However, discrepancies greater than 10% are observed for nickel and investigated in detail. In the final application, the relativistic capability is used in a preliminary investigation of the complicated absorption spectrum associated with cold lanthanide elements.

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Research Organization:: Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE

Grant/Contract Number:: AC52-06NA25396

OSTI ID:: 1329688

Alternate ID(s):: OSTI ID: 1251674

Report Number(s):: LA-UR-15-23684

Journal Information:: High Energy Density Physics, Vol. 16, Issue C; ISSN 1574-1818

Publisher:: ElsevierCopyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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Cited by: 44 works

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