Hugoniot of shocked liquid deuterium up to 300 GPa: Quantum molecular dynamic simulations

TL;DR

This study uses quantum molecular dynamics simulations to investigate the shock compression behavior of liquid deuterium up to 300 GPa, providing insights into its equation of state, dissociation, ionization, and phase transitions.

Contribution

The paper presents the first comprehensive QMD-based analysis of liquid deuterium's Hugoniot up to 300 GPa, including dissociation, ionization, and optical properties.

Findings

Maximum compression ratio of 4.5 at 40 GPa

Maximum compression ratio of 4.95 between 100-300 GPa

Agreement with experimental data from magnetic and laser-driven shock experiments

Abstract

Quantum molecular dynamic (QMD) simulations are introduced to study the thermophysical properties of liquid deuterium under shock compression. The principal Hugoniot is determined from the equation of states, where contributions from molecular dissociation and atomic ionization are also added onto the QMD data. At pressures below 100 GPa, our results show that the local maximum compression ratio of 4.5 can be achieved at 40 GPa, which is in good agreement with magnetically driven flyer and convergent-explosive experiments; At the pressure between 100 and 300 GPa, the compression ratio reaches a maximum of 4.95, which agrees well with recent high power laser-driven experiments. In addition, the nonmetal-metal transition and optical properties are also discussed.