CASUS Institute Seminar, rehearsal talk, Kushal Ramakrishna, PhD candidate, Center for Advanced Systems Understanding CASUS, Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR)
Abstract of the talk// Warm dense matter (WDM) is an extreme state of matter induced by extreme conditions and characterized as an intermediary state between (high-pressure) condensed matter and plasma. It has sparked a lot of attention in recent years as a result of current innovations in experiments and theoretical methods for modeling such complex systems. Such conditions naturally occur in astrophysical objects such as the interiors of the planets and in white and brown dwarfs. WDM can be created in the laboratory via various methods such as laser compression, Z-pinches, and heated diamond anvil cells.
The results are described here for many such systems across a range of conditions modeled using ab initio simulation methods. The first testbed concerns the electronic structure and linear response under ambient, high pressure, and warm dense matter conditions. Another major goal is to improve the existing models to compute static properties such as the equation of state with the inclusion of highly accurate data from quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) simulations relevant at finite temperatures. This approach improves the accuracy and is also computationally inexpensive compared to path integral Monte Carlo (PIMC) methods.