Related Experiment Video
Updated: Aug 9, 2025

Multiscale Sampling of a Heterogeneous Water/Metal Catalyst Interface using Density Functional Theory and Force-Field Molecular Dynamics
Published on: April 12, 2019
Properties of carbon up to 10 million kelvin from Kohn-Sham density functional theory molecular dynamics
Mandy Bethkenhagen1,2, Abhiraj Sharma3, Phanish Suryanarayana3
1Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, California 94550, USA.
Abstract:
Accurately modeling dense plasmas over wide-ranging conditions of pressure and temperature is a grand challenge critically important to our understanding of stellar and planetary physics as well as inertial confinement fusion. In this work, we employ Kohn-Sham density functional theory (DFT) molecular dynamics (MD) to compute the properties of carbon at warm and hot dense matter conditions in the vicinity of the principal Hugoniot. In particular, we calculate the equation of state (EOS), Hugoniot, pair distribution functions, and diffusion coefficients for carbon at densities spanning 8 g/cm^{3} to 16 g/cm^{3} and temperatures ranging from 100 kK to 10 MK using the Spectral Quadrature method. We find that the computed EOS and Hugoniot are in good agreement with path integral Monte Carlo results and the sesame database. Additionally, we calculate the ion-ion structure factor and viscosity for selected points. All results presented are at the level of full Kohn-Sham DFT-MD, free of empirical parameters, average-atom, and orbital-free approximations employed previously at such conditions.
Related Concept Videos
Kinetic Molecular Theory: Molecular Velocities, Temperature, and Kinetic Energy
Kinetic Theory of an Ideal Gas
The number of molecules in one mole is called...
Real Gases: Effects of Intermolecular Forces and Molecular Volume Deriving Van der Waals Equation
Kinetic Molecular Theory and Gas Laws Explain Properties of Gas Molecules
Thermodynamic Potentials
Heat Capacities of an Ideal Gas III

