Correlations in Hot Dense Helium

TL;DR

This paper investigates the structural properties of hot dense helium across a wide range of temperatures and densities using advanced first-principles simulations, revealing how correlations evolve under extreme conditions.

Contribution

It combines path integral Monte Carlo and density functional molecular dynamics to explore helium's structure at conditions previously inaccessible to first-principles methods.

Findings

Density and temperature significantly affect correlation functions.

Structural insights into dense hot helium fluids.

Methodology enables exploration of extreme states.

Abstract

Hot dense helium is studied with first-principles computer simulations. By combining path integral Monte Carlo and density functional molecular dynamics, a large temperature and density interval ranging from 1000 to 1000000 K and 0.4 to 5.4 g/cc becomes accessible to first-principles simulations and the changes in the structure of dense hot fluids can be investigated. The focus of this article are pair correlation functions between nuclei, between electrons, and between electrons and nuclei. The density and temperature dependence of these correlation functions is analyzed in order to describe the structure of the dense fluid helium at extreme conditions.