Nonideal Mixing Effects in Warm Dense Matter Studied with First-Principles Computer Simulations

TL;DR

This study evaluates the accuracy of the ideal mixing approximation for predicting shock Hugoniot curves in warm dense matter, demonstrating its effectiveness at high temperatures and identifying its limitations near ionization regimes.

Contribution

The paper demonstrates that the ideal mixing approximation can reliably reproduce Hugoniot curves in WDM at high temperatures, simplifying the analysis of complex mixtures.

Findings

The ideal mixing approximation works well above ~2*10^5 K.

It accurately reproduces the shape and maximum compression ratios of Hugoniot curves.

Deviations occur near L shell ionization and at lower temperatures due to chemical bonds.

Abstract

We study nonideal mixing effects in the regime of warm dense matter (WDM) by computing the shock Hugoniot curves of BN, MgO, and MgSiO_3. First, we derive these curves from the equations of state (EOS) of the fully interacting systems, which were obtained using a combination of path integral Monte Carlo calculations at high temperature and density functional molecular dynamics simulations at lower temperatures. We then use the ideal mixing approximation at constant pressure and temperature to rederive these Hugoniot curves from the EOS tables of the individual elements. We find that the linear mixing approximation works remarkably well at temperatures above ~2*10^5 K, where the shock compression ratio exceeds ~3.2. The shape of the Hugoniot curve of each compound is well reproduced. Regions of increased shock compression, that emerge because of the ionization of L and K shell electrons, are well represented and the maximum compression ratio on the Hugoniot curves is reproduced with high precision. Some deviations are seen near the onset of the L shell ionization regime, where ionization equilibrium in the fully interacting system cannot be well reproduced by the ideal mixing approximation. This approximation also breaks down at lower temperatures, where chemical bonds play an increasingly import role. However, the results imply that equilibrium properties of binary and ternary mixtures in the regime of WDM can be derived from the EOS tables of the individual elements. This significantly simplifies the characterization of binary and ternary mixtures in the WDM and plasma phases, which otherwise requires large numbers of more computationally expensive first-principles computer simulations.