Calculating Transport Coefficients in Warm Dense Matter

The tin used in Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography (EUVL) exists in a state of plasma known as

warm dense matter (WDM), where the average thermal, potential, and Fermi energies are all roughly

equal. In this process, energy from a laser is deposited to the tin atoms by first exciting electrons

and then through electron ion collisions, thus transport in WDM is important to understand. Here,

the traditional Boltzmann description of a plasma begins to break down, so the Mean Force Kinetic

Theory (MFKT) [S. D. Baalrud and J. Daligault, Phys. Plasmas 26, 082106 (2019)] can be used to

calculate transport properites instead. A code is presented to calculate transport coefficients using

the MFKT, and results show transport properties calculated for plasmas in the WDM regime. These

plasmas contain degenerate electrons, whose screening effect is modeled by the potential of mean

force which is obtained using the Quantum Hyper Netted Chain Model (QHNC) [C. E. Starrett

and D. Saumon, High Energy Density Phys. 10, 35 (2014)] developed by Starrett and Saumon.

Future work intends to develop an independent version of the QHNC code, a module to expand

transport coefficients to an arbitrary order in the Chapman-Enskog expansion, and a model for

electron transport properties.