Description of heterogeneous plasma microfield and optical properties of plasma by the QUIP model

Optical properties of plasmas are determined by presence of fluctuating microscopic electric field. The present work provides thorough analysis of contemporary models and points out their shortcomings. To overcome the latter, we take the QUIP (QUasi-Independent Particles) model derived ab initio. We provide generalization of the model allowing to account for microfield heterogeneity up to octupole term. We investigate convergence of the multipole series and show that higher order terms can be neglected. The model does not require laborious computations because all formulae are rather simple and are given in explicit form. This fact is an advantage of the proposed model compared to other contemporary models. We perform verification of the model via comparison with experiments. We emphasize that the comparison should be made with respect to the number of observed lines because this number strongly depends on the selected model. We outline experiments suitable for such testing. These are the experiments on Ar+Kr radiating plasma heated by laser radiation. In these experiments, the entire Ar+16 spectral series is observed. The QUIP model correctly describes the number of observed lines of the series, so its adequateness is justified. © 2020 Elsevier Inc.