226Ra, 228Ra and 40K as tracers of erosion and accumulation processes: A 3-year study on a beach with different sediment dynamics

The aim of this study is to analyse the role of natural radionuclides 226Ra, 228Ra, 40K and unsupported 210Pb (210Pbex), as erosion and accumulation process tracers. For this purpose, a complex system, including both the characteristic dynamics of a closed beach and those associated with a beach open to wave action, was studied. A 3-year study of monthly variation of 226Ra, 228Ra, 40K and 210Pbex was carried out at Las Canteras beach, on the Island of Gran Canaria (Spain), covering several erosion and accumulation periods. A correlation analysis, ANOVA test and Tukey’s Honestly Significant Difference (HSD) Test proved that the marine erosion and accumulation agents influenced the activity concentration values found for the different radionuclides. Moreover, the geochemical analysis of samples from maximum and minimum activity concentration values showed that the natural radionuclides studied could be suitable tracers for studying beach sediment dynamics in erosion and accumulation periods

Opacity calculation for target physics using the ABAKO/RAPCAL code

Radiative properties of hot dense plasmas remain a subject of current interest since they play an important role in inertial confinement fusion (ICF) research, as well as in studies on stellar physics. In particular, the understanding of ICF plasmas requires emissivities and opacities for both hydro-simulations and diagnostics. Nevertheless, the accurate calculation of these properties is still an open question and continuous efforts are being made to develop new models and numerical codes that can facilitate the evaluation of such properties. In this work the set of atomic models ABAKO/RAPCAL is presented, as well as a series of results for carbon and aluminum to show its capability for modeling the population kinetics of plasmas in both LTE and NLTE regimes. Also, the spectroscopic diagnostics of a laser-produced aluminum plasma using ABAKO/RAPCAL is discussed. Additionally, as an interesting application of these codes, fitting analytical formulas for Rosseland and Planck mean opacities for carbon plasmas are reported. These formulas are useful as input data in hydrodynamic simulation of targets where the computation task is so hard that in line computation with sophisticated opacity codes is prohibitive

A new set of relativistic screening constants for the screened hydrogenic model

AnewRelativisticScreenedHydrogenicModel has been developed to calculate atomic data needed to compute the optical and thermodynamic properties of high energy density plasmas. The model is based on anewset of universal screeningconstants, including nlj-splitting that has been obtained by fitting to a large database of ionization potentials and excitation energies. This database was built with energies compiled from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) database of experimental atomic energy levels, and energies calculated with the Flexible Atomic Code (FAC). The screeningconstants have been computed up to the 5p3/2 subshell using a Genetic Algorithm technique with an objective function designed to minimize both the relative error and the maximum error. To select the best set of screeningconstants some additional physical criteria has been applied, which are based on the reproduction of the filling order of the shells and on obtaining the best ground state configuration. A statistical error analysis has been performed to test the model, which indicated that approximately 88% of the data lie within a ±10% error interval. We validate the model by comparing the results with ionization energies, transition energies, and wave functions computed using sophisticated self-consistent codes and experimental data

Code to calculate optical properties for plasmas in a wide range of densities

A flexible code developed to obtain optical properties for plasmas in a wide range of densities and temperatures named ATOM3R-OP is presented. It is structured in three modules devoted to the calculation of the atomic magnitudes, the ionic abundances and the optical properties, respectively, which are briefly described. Finally, some results and remarks are shown for the source function of carbon plasmas

Line photon transport in a non-homogeneous plasma using radiative coupling coefficients

We present a steady-state collisional-radiative (CR) model for the calculation of level populations in non-homogeneous plasmas with planar geometry. The line photon transport is taken into account following an angle- and frequency-averaged escape probability model. Several models where the same approach has been used can be found in the literature, but the main difference between our model and those ones is that the details of geometry are exactly treated in the definition of coupling coefficients and a local profile is taken into account in each plasma cell

Calculation of optical properties for hot plasmas using a screened hydrogenic model

In work a hydrogenic versions of the code ATOM3R-OP is presented. This flexible code has been developed to obtain optical properties for plasmas in a wide range of densities and temperatures named and the Hydrogenic versions is intended to couple with hydrodynamic codes. The code is structured in three modules devoted to the calculation of the atomic magnitudes, the ionic abundances and the optical properties, respectively, which are briefly described. Finally, bound-bound opacities and emissivities of Carbon plasma computed with this model are compared with more sophisticated self-consistent codes