Phase Properties and Transport Processes in Dense Multi-Ionic-Mixture Plasmas

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1. Preliminary StudyThe head investigator in collaboration with the investigators wrote a review article on the statistical physics of dense plasmas in 1986 and published it in Physics Reports.2. Nonlinear Density-Functional Approach to the Crystallization of the Classical One-Component PlasmaThe density-functional approach to freezing of the classical one-component plasma into a bcc crystal was developed on the basis of the improved hypernetted-chain approximation to the fluid correlation functions. The role of the threebody or angu-lar correlations was elucidated through microscopic calculations. We thereby obtained a simplified density-wave theory of freezing.3. Thermodynamic Functions, Freezing Transition, and Phase Diagram of Dense Carbon-Oxygen Mixtures in White DwartsEquations of state for dense carbon-oxygen (C-O) binary-ionic mixtures (BIM's) appropriate to the interiors of white dwarfs were investigated through Monte Carlo simulations, by solution to relevant integral equations, and by variational calculations in the density-functional formalism. It was thereby shown that the internal energies of the C-O BIM solids and fluids both obeyed precisely the linear mixing formulas. We then presented an accurate calculation of the phase diagram associated with freezing transitions in such BIM materials, resulting in novel prediction of an azeotropic diagram. Discontinuities of the mass density across the azeotropic phase boundaries were evaluated numerically for application to a study of white-dwarf evolution.