Simulation of a strong steady-state plasma shock in a warm dense matter regime

BD Keenan and CD Smith and D Livescu and J Haack and RS Pavel, PHYSICS OF PLASMAS, 30, 012706 (2023).

DOI: 10.1063/5.0129941

The structure of collisional plasma shocks has been subject to an extensive, multi-decadal investigation-in the hydrodynamic, hybrid kinetic ion/electron fluid, and fully kinetic ion/electron limits. Despite this thoroughness, all of these studies apply exclusively to classical, weakly coupled plasmas. Here, we report the first results for a planar hydrodynamic simulation of a strong, steady-state shock in a subspace of the warm dense matter (WDM) regime. Specifically, we consider a plasma of fully degenerate electrons with moderate-to- strongly coupled ions. Since the WDM ion and electron transport coefficients and equation of state differ markedly from their non- degenerate, weak-coupling equivalents, we find that the structure of a WDM plasma shock notably deviates from the ideal plasma picture.

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