Optical and physical properties of hydrocarbons with metal impurities in the warm dense matter regime

The hydrocarbon (CH) polymer is often chosen as the converter material with potential applications to Z-pinch driven dynamic hohlraum implosion experiments. Its physical and optical properties in the warm dense matter regime are important for dynamic hohlraum platform designs. Using the quantum molecular dynamics (QMD) method, we have obtained the equation of state, absorption coefficient, and reflectivity of hydrocarbon and Al-CH mixtures with the temperature and density ranging from 10(4)-10(6) K and 0.1-0.9 g/cm(3), respectively. The QMD-predicted principal Hugoniot data are compared with experiments as well as the theoretical calculations, and both show good agreement. The optical reflectivity from the corresponding dielectric functions is calculated using the corrected refraction index of the ambient (n(0)=1.59). Besides, we have further analyzed the atomic structure and bond dissociation process of polystyrene and Al-CH mixture systems using a bond tracking method with the temperature ranging from 1000K to 10000K. The Al impurities have a slightly promoting effect on the initial stage of polystyrene pyrolysis. The calculation results can be helpful for future theoretical and experimental studies in high energy density physics research.