Theoretical description of spherically confined strongly correlated Yukawa plasmas

TL;DR

This paper presents a theoretical model for the radial density profile of strongly correlated Yukawa plasmas confined in a harmonic trap, highlighting shell formation and improving agreement with simulations through a renormalized coupling approach.

Contribution

It introduces a density functional theory-based model that accurately describes shell structures in Yukawa plasmas across various parameters, surpassing traditional hypernetted chain approximations.

Findings

Shell structure observed in simulations and experiments.

HNC approximation shows shell formation but lacks quantitative accuracy at strong coupling.

Renormalized coupling constant improves agreement with Monte Carlo results.

Abstract

A theoretical description of the radial density profile for charged particles with Yukawa interaction in a harmonic trap is described. At strong Coulomb coupling shell structure is observed in both computer simulations and experiments. Correlations responsible for such shell structure are described here using a recently developed model based in density functional theory. A wide range of particle number, Coulomb coupling, and screening lengths is considered within the fluid phase. A hypernetted chain approximation shows the formation of shell structure, but fails to give quantitative agreement with Monte Carlo simulation results at strong coupling. Significantly better agreement is obtained within the hypernetted chain structure using a renormalized coupling constant, representing bridge function corrections.