Theoretical Modeling of Radiation-driven Atomic Kinetics of a Neon Photoionized Plasma

Abstract

We report on a theoretical study on atomic kinetics modeling of a photoionized neon plasma at conditions relevant to laboratory experiments performed at the Z-machine in Sandia National Laboratories. We describe an atomic kinetics model and code, ATOKIN, that was developed and used to compute the atomic level population distribution. The study includes atomic level sensitivity with respect to energy level structure, radiation and transient effects, electron temperature and x-ray drive sensitivity and an idea for electron temperature extraction from a level population ratio. The neon atomic model considers several ionization stages of highly-charged neon ions as well as a detailed structure of non-autoionizing and autoionizing energy levels in each ion. In the energy level sensitivity study, the atomic model was changed by adding certain types of energy levels such as singly-excited, auto-ionizing doubly-excited states. Furthermore, these levels were added ion by ion for the most populated ions. Atomic processes populating and de-populating the energy levels consider photoexcitation and photoionization due to the external radiation flux, and spontaneous and collisional atomic processes including plasma radiation trapping. Relevant atomic cross sections and rates were computed with the atomic structure and scattering FAC code. The calculations were performed at constant particle number density and driven by the time-histories of temperature and external radiation flux. These conditions were selected in order to resemble those achieved in photoionized plasma experiments at the Z facility of Sandia National Laboratories. For the same set of time histories, calculations were done in a full time-dependent mode and also as a sequence of instantaneous, steady states. Differences between both calculations are useful to identify transient effects in the ionization and atomic kinetics of the photoionized plasma, and its dependence on the atomic model and plasma environmental conditions. We also calculated transmission spectra in an effort to identify time-dependent effects in observed spectral features. Furthermore, all the steady state and time-dependent calculations were performed for different electron temperature histories to investigate electron temperature effects in the same way transient effects were examined. The idea for electron temperature extraction based on the population ratio of two energy levels close in energy was investigated after preliminary estimations revealed evidence of dominant electron collisional excitation and de-excitation over photo-excitation and spontaneous radiative decay between the ground state, $1s^{2}2s$, and the first excited state, $1s^{2}2p$, levels of Li-like Ne. Since the populations of these levels were determined from the analysis of transmission spectra, it was then possible to estimate the temperature via a Boltzmann factor. Further studies were performed for various plasma conditions such as temperature and density in order to confirm the reliability of the method. Calculations were performed for a sequence of steady states and in a full time-dependent mode. Finally, the instantaneous spectra was integrated over several time intervals in order to test the method on conditions similar to those of laboratory experiments