Issues in the calculations of dc conductivity of warm dense aluminum

TL;DR

This paper investigates how various physical quantities influence the calculation of dc conductivity in warm dense aluminum, aiming to improve understanding and accuracy in modeling electrical resistivity.

Contribution

It analyzes the sensitivity of resistivity calculations to key physical parameters within the Ziman-Evans framework for warm dense aluminum.

Findings

Resistivity is highly sensitive to plasma ionization levels.

Chemical potential variations significantly affect conductivity estimates.

Electron-ion scattering cross-section impacts resistivity calculations.

Abstract

In the Ziman-Evans formulation, the electrical resistivity involves several quantities like the plasma mean ionization and chemical potential, the electron-ion scattering cross-section, the ion-ion structure factor, and the derivative of the Fermi distribution with respect to electron energy. Therefore, in order to make significant progress while comparing different models or analyzing experimental measurements, it is important to try to get insight into such partial physical quantities. In the present work, we propose to investigate the sensitivity of the resistivity to the different physical quantities required for its computation.