X-ray spectroscopy validation of ionization potential depression models in dense plasma created by petawatt laser pulses

Density effects have great importance for studying the state of matter at high energy densities both for astrophysical and laboratory objects. At the moment, the question remains as to which model should be used for the description of the effect of ionization potential depression (IPD) in plasma with densities up to solid-state ones. Recent X-ray free-electron laser based researches claimed the adequacy of an early IPD model of Ecker and Kroll over the well-accepted model of Stewart and Pyatt, provided that these two models give significantly different predictions. Subsequent researches performed with optical lasers have received the opposite result. This work is intended to resolve the existing contradiction in conclusions of mentioned experiments. For the first time, the IPD effect for Si XIII ions of plasma generated by an ultrarelativistic optical laser pulse was described and quantified. We demonstrate the disappearance of electronic states up to the state with a principal quantum number of n = 4 (inclusively); the plasma density was varied from the critical to the near-solid one. A radiation-collision code PrismSPECT was used to distinguish different IPD models.