The goal of this project is to develop a Hybrid PIC code capable of modeling dense plasmas and suitable for studying fast ignition. The new hybrid PIC code will be fully three dimensional capable of running Cartesian or cylindrical geometries. It will employ a direct implicit particle push algorithm that allows larger time steps than conventional explicit PIC codes allowing solid density, colder plasmas to be modeled. Electrons can be represented as kinetic, or fluid particles. In the fluid description the electrons carry a temperature, which is advanced by a separate energy equation that greatly reduces the effect of numerical cooling. The net effect of these algorithms is to enable the code to model larger, more dense transport-region plasmas for longer simulation times than explicit PIC codes.
Radiative flows can have an important influence on the evolution of dense plasmas and inclusion of this effect is necessary in many instances to correctly model high energy density plasma behavior. As part of this project a radiative flow transport model is being developed and will be incorporated into the hybrid PIC code.
The hybrid PIC code will be used to model plasma jet accelerators currently under development at HyperV Technologies. These studies will be used for comparisons against experimental measurements on these devices in order to benchmark the code. The hybrid PIC code will also be used for fusion energy research on other projects as well as for other HEDP applications.