Quantum Molecular Dynamics of Partially Ionized Plasmas

Abstract

We study a partially ionized hydrogen plasma by means of quantum molecular dynamics, which is based on wave packets. We introduce a new model which distinguishes between free and bound electrons. The free electrons are modelled as Gaussian wave packets with fixed width. For the bound states the 1s-wave function of the hydrogen atom is assumed. In our simulations we obtain thermodynamic properties in the equilibrium such as the internal energy and the degree of ionization. The degree of ionization is in good agreement with theoretical predictions. The thermodynamic functions agree well with results from quantum statistics for 10000K < T < 40000K.Comment: 13 pages, Latex with 5 postscript figures, to be published in Phys. Lett.