Talk by William Johns (Mathematical Sciences, MSU)

10/08/2020  WebEx Meeting  3:10-4:00pm

Abstract:  Average atom models are a common way to efficiently explore the behavior of plasma by only modeling a single atom. We will first explore some classical applied math and complex analysis techniques implemented in the TARTARUS average atom model developed at LANL. Opacity in a plasma is a very important characteristic in both astrophysics applications and inertially confined fusion experiments. However, opacity is hard to understand from an average atom model as each possible configuration of the electrons contributes different absorption lines to the opacity. Accurate computation of the density of states in the plasma is an important first step towards computing accurate opacities. During an internship in summer 2020, I worked with a team at LANL to extend TARTARUS to model atoms in specific electron configurations. Using many such configurations, we were able to compute the density of states in the plasma while taking advantage of the TARTARUS model’s specific strengths. Accurate computation of the density of states is an important first step towards computing accurate opacities. I will give an overview of the project and present some results and comparisons of density of states computations.