First-principles equation-of-state table of deuterium for inertial confinement fusion applications

Journal Article · Thu Dec 01 00:00:00 EST 2011 · Physical Review. B, Condensed Matter and Materials Physics

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PHYSREVB.84.224109· OSTI ID:21596936

Hu, S X; Goncharov, V N; Skupsky, S ^[1]; Militzer, B ^[2]

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1. Laboratory for Laser Energetics, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York 14623 (United States)
2. Department of Earth and Planetary Science and Department of Astronomy, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720 (United States)

Understanding and designing inertial confinement fusion (ICF) implosions through radiation-hydrodynamics simulations relies on the accurate knowledge of the equation of state (EOS) of the deuterium and tritium fuels. To minimize the drive energy for ignition, the imploding shell of DT fuel must be kept as cold as possible. Such low-adiabat ICF implosions can access to coupled and degenerate plasma conditions, in which the analytical EOS models become inaccurate due to many-body effects. Using the path-integral Monte Carlo (PIMC) simulations we have derived a first-principles EOS (FPEOS) table of deuterium that covers typical ICF fuel conditions at densities ranging from 0.002 to 1596 g/cm{sup 3} and temperatures of 1.35 eV to 5.5 keV. We report the internal energy and the pressure and discuss the structure of the plasma in terms of pair-correlation functions. When compared with the widely used SESAME table and the revised Kerley03 table, discrepancies in the internal energy and in the pressure are identified for moderately coupled and degenerate plasma conditions. In contrast to the SESAME table, the revised Kerley03 table is in better agreement with our FPEOS results over a wide range of densities and temperatures. Although subtle differences still exist for lower temperatures (T < 10 eV) and moderate densities (1 to 10 g/cm{sup 3}), hydrodynamics simulations of cryogenic ICF implosions using the FPEOS table and the Kerley03 table have resulted in similar results for the peak density, areal density ({rho}R), and neutron yield, which differ significantly from the SESAME simulations.

• OSTI ID: 21596936
• Journal Information: Physical Review. B, Condensed Matter and Materials Physics, Vol. 84, Issue 22; Other Information: DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevB.84.224109; (c) 2011 American Institute of Physics; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 1098-0121
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS
SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND SUPERFLUIDITY
CORRELATION FUNCTIONS
DENSITY
DEUTERIUM
EQUATIONS OF STATE
HYDRODYNAMICS
IMPLOSIONS
INERTIAL CONFINEMENT
MANY-BODY PROBLEM
MONTE CARLO METHOD
SIMULATION
TRITIUM
BETA DECAY RADIOISOTOPES
BETA-MINUS DECAY RADIOISOTOPES
CALCULATION METHODS
CONFINEMENT
EQUATIONS
FLUID MECHANICS
FUNCTIONS
HYDROGEN ISOTOPES
ISOTOPES
LIGHT NUCLEI
MECHANICS
NUCLEI
ODD-EVEN NUCLEI
ODD-ODD NUCLEI
PHYSICAL PROPERTIES
PLASMA CONFINEMENT
RADIOISOTOPES
STABLE ISOTOPES
YEARS LIVING RADIOISOTOPES