Nonlocal Model for Electron Heat Flux and Self-generated Magnetic Field

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel nonlocal model that simultaneously captures kinetic effects on electron heat flux and magnetic field in hydrodynamic scale, crucial for inertial confinement fusion applications.

Contribution

The paper develops the first nonlocal model that accounts for both heat conduction and magnetic field generation self-consistently in magnetized plasma.

Findings

Nonlocal effects significantly alter magnetic field distribution in laser ablation.

The model highlights the importance of electric field corrections in nonlocal plasma modeling.

Potential impact on understanding hydrodynamic instabilities in ICF.

Abstract

Coupling of electron heat conduction and magnetic field takes significant effects in inertial confinement fusion (ICF). As the nonlocal models for electron heat conduction have been developed for modeling kinetic effects on heat flux in hydrodynamic scale, modeling kinetic effects on magnetic field are still restricted to flux limiters instead of nonlocal corrections. We propose a new nonlocal model which can recover the kinetic effects for heat conduction and magnetic field in hydrodynamic scale simultaneously. We clarify the necessity of self-consistently considering the electric field corrections in nonlocal models to get reasonable physical quantities. Using the new nonlocal model, the nonlocal corrections of transport coefficients in magnetized plasma and the magnetic field generation without density gradients are systematically studied. We find nonlocal effects significantly change the magnetic field distribution in laser ablation, which potentially influences the hydrodynamic instabilities in ICF.