A comparison of kinetic and multifluid simulations of laser-produced colliding plasmas

The collision and subsequent interaction of counter-streaming plasmas occurs in several areas of laser-plasma research including double foil targets for x-ray lasers and the plasma blow-off inside ICF hohlraums. Because a single fluid model allows for only one value of the flow velocity at any one spatial location, interpenetration of the plamas is not allowed resulting in immediate stagnation with complete conversion of the ion-streaming kinetic energy to thermal energy. Multifluid models have been developed which employ multiple ion fluid species that interact through the self-consistent electrostatic field and collisional coupling. Because they are approximations to a kinetic situation, the form of these coupling coefficients is not unique, with various workers using differing approximations. More recently, Larroche has implemented a finite difference approach to the ion Fokker-Planck equation while Jones and co-workers have performed two-dimensional simulations of colliding plasmas using a particle-in-cell code with a new collisional model. Our kinetic modeling also makes use of particle in cell (PIC) techniques with Monte Carlo (MC) particle-particle collisions algorithm that is equivalent to the Fokker-Planck collision operator. We have made direct comparison of this MC-PIC model to multifluid simulations on both simple slowing-down and equilibration problems as well as problems characteristic of laser generated colliding plasmas. These comparisons have established the validity of the multifluid model as well as aided in the development of the kinetic capability for more challenging geometries