TITLE
Temperature Relaxation in Plasmas, Warm Dense Matter, and Solids
SPEAKER
Dr. Jan Vorberger, Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (Germany)
ABSTRACT
Many systems in experiment and application are driven by a large energy intake in a relatively short time period. Important drivers are lasers which supply energy over femto-, pico-, or even nanoseconds. Similarly, one can use beams of electrons or other particles. Common to all methods is that the energy is coupled not into all particles of the target but into a subsystem only: either the electrons or the ions. Thus, a relaxation and equilibration of all the degrees of freedom in the system is taking place.
I will give examples for such processes and their importance from inertial confinement fusion, warm dense matter research, and solid state systems. The basic principles of describing such situations theoretically are of course similar for all the distinct cases. The specific methods used differ considerably and range from density functional theory to real-time Green's functions. I will explain advantages and disadvantages of them.
BIO
Jan Vorberger is staff scientist at the Institute of Radiation Physics at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf e.V.. His main interests are the physics of warm dense matter, strongly coupled plasmas and high pressure solids and fluids. He uses various flavors of density functional theory and quantum many body theory to describe these systems in equilibrium and non-equilibrium. Jan Vorberger has successfully collaborated on a number of experiments fielding high-energy lasers to create and x-ray scattering to diagnose extreme states of matter as found in the interior of planets. He received his PhD from the Ernst-Moritz-Arndt-University Greifswald (2005), spent two years as postdoc at the Carnegie Institution of Washington D.C.
(USA), a further 5 years at the University of Warwick (UK), before returning to Germany for a post at the Max-Planck-Institute of the Physics of Complex Systems (2012-2014).