Monte Carlo approach to calculate ionization dynamics of hot solid-density plasmas within particle-in-cell simulations.

A physical model based on a Monte Carlo approach is proposed to calculate the ionization dynamics of hot-solid-density plasmas within particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations, and where the impact (collision) ionization (CI), electron-ion recombination (RE), and ionization potential depression (IPD) by surrounding plasmas are taken into consideration self-consistently. When compared with other models, which are applied in the literature for plasmas near thermal equilibrium, the temporal relaxation of ionization dynamics can also be simulated by the proposed model. Besides, this model is general and can be applied for both single elements and alloys with quite different compositions. The proposed model is implemented into a PIC code, with (final) ionization equilibriums sustained by competitions between CI and its inverse process (i.e., RE). Comparisons between the full model and model without IPD or RE are performed. Our results indicate that for bulk aluminium at temperature of 1 to 1000 eV, (i) the averaged ionization degree increases by including IPD; while (ii) the averaged ionization degree is significantly over estimated when the RE is neglected. A direct comparison from the PIC code is made with the existing models for the dependence of averaged ionization degree on thermal equilibrium temperatures and shows good agreements with that generated from Saha-Boltzmann model and/or FLYCHK code.