A New Generation of Los Alamos Opacity Tables

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new set of Los Alamos opacity tables for elements hydrogen through zinc, computed with detailed atomic structure calculations, and demonstrates their application in solar modeling.

Contribution

The paper presents a new, publicly available opacity table set using advanced atomic structure calculations and a robust equation-of-state model, improving upon previous opacity data.

Findings

Tables are based on detailed atomic structure calculations.

Comparison with measurements and other codes shows good agreement.

Application to solar models demonstrates the tables' utility.

Abstract

We present a new, publicly available, set of Los Alamos OPLIB opacity tables for the elements hydrogen through zinc. Our tables are computed using the Los Alamos ATOMIC opacity and plasma modeling code, and make use of atomic structure calculations that use fine-structure detail for all the elements considered. Our equation-of-state (EOS) model, known as ChemEOS, is based on the minimization of free energy in a chemical picture and appears to be a reasonable and robust approach to determining atomic state populations over a wide range of temperatures and densities. In this paper we discuss in detail the calculations that we have performed for the 30 elements considered, and present some comparisons of our monochromatic opacities with measurements and other opacity codes. We also use our new opacity tables in solar modeling calculations and compare and contrast such modeling with previous work.