Viscosity of a multispecies plasma containing hydrogen and high-Z ions

TL;DR

This paper investigates how the presence of hydrogen in multispecies plasmas affects their viscosity, which is crucial for understanding stability and turbulence in high energy density physics applications.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis and accurate calculation of plasma viscosity in hydrogen and high-Z ion mixtures, highlighting the impact of hydrogen on viscosity enhancement.

Findings

Hydrogen significantly increases plasma viscosity in multispecies systems.

The study offers precise viscosity coefficients for hydrogen-high-Z ion plasmas.

Results inform stability and turbulence modeling in HED applications.

Abstract

Materials containing hydrogen and high-Z ion species are used in a variety of high energy density physics (HED) applications, and it becomes increasingly important to investigate transport properties of these substances as they become fully-ionized multispecies plasmas. In particular, of significant practical interest, is the analysis of the plasma viscosity as it can determine stability and turbulence properties of the HED system. It has been pointed out by D. Ryutov [Phys. Plasmas 3, 4336 (1996)] that the presence of a substantial amount of hydrogen in a multispecies plasma can significantly enhance its viscosity. The present work reports on a detailed analysis of this effect and the accurate calculation of the corresponding viscosity coefficient.