Density-functional theory of hydrogen plasmas

Journal Article · Fri Oct 01 04:00:00 EDT 1982 · Phys. Rev. A; (United States)

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.26.2096· OSTI ID:6416277

Dharma-wardana, M W.C.; Perrot, F

The density-functional theory (DFT) for a system of ions and electrons having over-all charge neutrality is presented. For a given temperature and free-electron density, the theory self-consistently determines the various pair-distribution functions, bound states, and the effective ion charge Z-bar = Z-n/sub b/, where n/sub b/ is the mean number of bound electrons per ion. With the use of a sufficiently large correlation sphere to represent the ''physically relevant'' part of the plasma, a Kohn-Sham-type Schroedinger equation is solved for the electrons. The density-functional equations for the ions reduce to a Gibbs-Boltzmann equation containing an effective ion-correlation potential. The latter is obtained from the hypernetted-chain equation. The electron exchange-correlation potential is obtained from quantum many-body theory. The method is applied to an electron-proton plasma (EPP) for a number of physical situations. The machine-simulation (MS) results in the classical one-component-plasma limit, as well as the standard ''proton-in-jellium'' results, are correctly recovered in suitable limits. The MS results for the EPP plasma are limited by classical approximations, but are found to be in reasonable agreement with our DFT results which are probably more well founded. A shallow 1s-like bound state appears with increase of temperature or decrease of density. The proton-pair distribution function in the EPP shows the onset of short-range order only when GAMMA>5 or more. The electron-proton distribution function is found to be relatively insensitive to the details of the ion distribution for the static properties studied in this paper.

• Research Organization: National Research Council of Canada, Ottawa K1A 0R6, Canada
• OSTI ID: 6416277
• Journal Information: Phys. Rev. A; (United States), Journal Name: Phys. Rev. A; (United States) Vol. 26:4; ISSN PLRAA
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY
700105* -- Fusion Energy-- Plasma Research-- Plasma Kinetics-Theoretical-- (-1987)
BARYONS
CORRELATIONS
ELECTRONS
ELEMENTARY PARTICLES
ELEMENTS
FERMIONS
FUNCTIONAL MODELS
HADRONS
HYDROGEN
LEPTONS
NONMETALS
NUCLEONS
PLASMA DENSITY
PLASMA SIMULATION
PROTONS
SIMULATION