Average-atom approach for transport properties of shocked argon in the presence of a magnetic field

TL;DR

This paper models electron transport in shocked argon under magnetic fields using an average-atom approach, successfully matching experimental and theoretical resistivity and Hall measurements.

Contribution

It introduces a magneto-resistive hydrodynamics extension to the average-atom model for shocked argon, incorporating magnetic field effects into transport property calculations.

Findings

Good agreement between calculated and experimental conductivities.

Accurate prediction of Hall resistivity and Hall constant.

Extension of average-atom models to include magnetic field effects.

Abstract

We present electron transport calculations of shocked argon based on an average-atom modeling of the plasma, and compare them with measurements, involving both incident and reflected shock waves. Since the corresponding experiments are subject to a 5 T magnetic field, the impact of the latter on the Rankine-Hugoniot equations is taken into account, starting from the magneto-resistive hydrodynamics, and the resistivity tensor is deduced from the Boltzmann equation. The resistivity tensor yields the electrical and Hall resistivities. Our average-atom code Paradisio provides the quantities required for the calculation of electrical resistivity within the Ziman-Evans formalism, as well as for the Hall resistivity. We obtain a good agreement between calculated conductivities and experimental values, both for the incident and reflected shocks. Our values of the Hall constant are compared to experimental values derived from Hall voltage measurements, as well as to theoretical ones based on the quantum statistical linear-relaxation-time approach.