Comparison of atomic potentials and eigenvalues in strongly coupled neon plasmas

Abstract

A self-consistent, completely-quantum-mechanical formalism has been developed that characterizes the fundamental atomic properties of ions in dense plasmas. This theory is applied to neon plasmas under strongly coupled conditions and the results are compared with those obtained from the hypernetted-chain approximation employing a semiclassical two-body interaction. The comparisons point out the lack of validity of simple approximations for atomic calculations in strongly coupled plasmas and indicate that the self-consistent theory provides a method of obtaining meaningful results even when the plasma ion coupling parameter is of order 5.