Thermal conductivity of a laser plasma

We present a model of the electron thermal conductivity of a laser-produced plasma. The model, supported by Vlasov-Fokker-Planck simulations, predicts that laser absorption reduces conductivity by forcing electrons out of a Maxwell-Boltzmann equilibrium, which results in the depletion of both low-velocity bulk electrons and high-velocity tail electrons. We show that both the bulk and tail electrons approximately follow super-Gaussian distributions, but with distinct exponents that each depend on the laser intensity and wavelength through the parameter alpha = Zv2E/v2T. For a value of alpha = 0.5, tail depletion reduces the thermal conductivity to half its zerointensity value. We present our results as simple analytic fits that can be readily implemented in any radiationhydrodynamics code or used to correct the local limit of nonlocal conduction models.