Ion structure factors and electron transport in dense Coulomb plasmas

Abstract

The dynamical structure factor of a Coulomb crystal of ions is calculated at arbitrary temperature below the melting point taking into account multi-phonon processes in the harmonic approximation. In a strongly coupled Coulomb ion liquid, the static structure factor is split into two parts, a Bragg-diffraction-like one, describing incipient long-range order structures, and an inelastic part corresponding to thermal ion density fluctuations. It is assumed that the diffractionlike scattering does not lead to the electron relaxation in the liquid phase. This assumption, together with the inclusion of multi-phonon processes in the crystalline phase, eliminates large discontinuities of the transport coefficients (jumps of the thermal and electric conductivities, as well as shear viscosity, reported previously) at a melting point.