Revision 1

Accepted · first revision · record

Title: Electron thermal and electrical conductivity of warm dense matter
Plain: How fast heat flows through warm dense matter controls how a fusion capsule's shell burns away and how fast its hot core cools. Different theories disagree by large factors, and almost no measurements exist.
Precise: For hydrogen, carbon and CH at density 1 to 100 $\mathrm{g}/\mathrm{cm}^3$ and temperature 10 to 300 eV (ion coupling and electron degeneracy both of order 1), determine the electrical conductivity $\sigma$ and electron thermal conductivity $\kappa$, and the Lorenz number $L=\kappa e^2/(\sigma T)$ ($T$ in energy units) relative to the degenerate value $\pi^2/3$; Kubo-Greenwood DFT-MD, time-dependent DFT, average-atom and Lee-More type models differ by factors of up to several. An answer is measured $\kappa$ and $\sigma$ with 20 percent precision at two or more conditions and a theory matching them.
Settled by: Time-resolved conductivity measurements (e.g. X-ray or optical probes of isochorically heated or shocked samples) at 20 percent precision, compared with first-principles calculations.
Kind: well-posed
Answer type: value
References: (empty)
Literature status: contested
Status note: A code-comparison workshop (Grabowski et al. 2020, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.hedp.2020.100905) documented large spreads between transport models in this regime.
Posed since: (empty)