Fluctuations and the ionization potential in dense plasmas

A semi-analytic model is developed to estimate continuum lowering in dense plasmas including fluctuations. The model is applied to aluminum and compared with recent experiments at the Linac Coherent Light Source [O. Ciricosta et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 109 (2012) 065002] that reported the ionization potential depression of K-shell electrons in solid density aluminum at temperatures up to 180 eV. The analysis suggests fluctuations, which are neglected in most continuum lowering models but are essential to describe energy absorption by a system, are sufficiently large to impact the interpretation of the experimental results.