Physica B accepted Stochastic Kinetics of Electron Transitions in Nonideal Plasmas

Abstract The time evolution of the population of excited atomic and ionic levels for an ensemble of reacting particles in dense plasmas is studied on the basis of a master equation. Many-body effects are taken into account via energy-level shifts that are determined by the interaction parts of the chemical potentials of free and bound particles. These chemical potentials are calculated from an approximation for free energy of partially ionized plasmas accounting for exchange and correlation as well as for short-range repulsion due to bound shell electrons. Using semi-empirical cross sections the method is applied to investigate the recombination of dense plasma containing carbon and hydrogen. The master equation can be combined with a temperature equation to account for different thermodynamic constrains. We compare isentropic, isothermal, and isoenergetic recombination of dense hydrogen plasma