Unraveling electronic correlations in warm dense quantum plasmas

Tobias Dornheim (), Tilo Döppner, Panagiotis Tolias, Maximilian P. Böhme, Luke B. Fletcher, Thomas Gawne, Frank R. Graziani, Dominik Kraus, Michael J. MacDonald, Zhandos A. Moldabekov, Sebastian Schwalbe, Dirk O. Gericke and Jan Vorberger
Additional contact information
Tobias Dornheim: Center for Advanced Systems Understanding (CASUS)
Tilo Döppner: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Panagiotis Tolias: Royal Institute of Technology (KTH)
Maximilian P. Böhme: Center for Advanced Systems Understanding (CASUS)
Luke B. Fletcher: SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
Thomas Gawne: Center for Advanced Systems Understanding (CASUS)
Frank R. Graziani: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Dominik Kraus: Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR)
Michael J. MacDonald: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Zhandos A. Moldabekov: Center for Advanced Systems Understanding (CASUS)
Sebastian Schwalbe: Center for Advanced Systems Understanding (CASUS)
Dirk O. Gericke: University of Warwick
Jan Vorberger: Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR)

Nature Communications, 2025, vol. 16, issue 1, 1-11

Abstract: Abstract The study of matter at extreme densities and temperatures has emerged as a highly active frontier at the interface of plasma physics, material science and quantum chemistry with relevance for planetary modeling and inertial confinement fusion. A particular feature of such warm dense matter is the complex interplay of Coulomb interactions, quantum effects, and thermal excitations, making its rigorous theoretical description challenging. Here, we demonstrate how ab initio path integral Monte Carlo simulations allow us to unravel this intricate interplay for the example of strongly compressed beryllium, focusing on two X-ray Thomson scattering data sets obtained at the National Ignition Facility. We find excellent agreement between simulation and experiment with a very high level of consistency between independent observations without the need for any empirical input parameters. Our results call into question previously used chemical models, with important implications for the interpretation of scattering experiments and radiation hydrodynamics simulations.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-60278-3 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:16:y:2025:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-025-60278-3

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-60278-3

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().