Electron screening of ions is among the most fundamental properties of plasmas, determining the effective ionic interactions that impact all properties of a plasma. With the development of new experimental facilities that probe high-energy-density physics regimes ranging from warm dense matter to hot dense matter, a unified framework for describing dense plasma screening has become essential. Such a unified framework is presented here based on finite-temperature orbital-free density functional theory, including gradient corrections and exchange-correlation effects. We find a new analytic pair potential for the ion-ion interaction that incorporates moderate electronic coupling, quantum degeneracy, gradient corrections to the free energy, and finite temperatures. This potential can be used in large-scale "classical" molecular dynamics simulations, as well as in simpler theoretical models (e.g., integral equations and Monte Carlo), with no additional computational complexity. The new potential theoretically connects limits of Debye-Hückel-Yukawa, Lindhard, Thomas-Fermi, and Bohmian quantum hydrodynamics descriptions. Based on this new potential, we predict ionic static structure factors that can be validated using x-ray Thomson scattering data.
Global feedback control of pattern formation in a wide class of systems described by the Swift-Hohenberg (SH) equation is investigated theoretically, by means of stability analysis and numerical simulations. Two cases are considered: (i) feedback control of the competition between hexagon and roll patterns described by a supercritical SH equation, and (ii) the use of feedback control to suppress the blowup in a system described by a subcritical SH equation. In case (i), it is shown that feedback control can change the hexagon and roll stability regions in the parameter space as well as cause a transition from up to down hexagons and stabilize a skewed (mixed-mode) hexagonal pattern. In case (ii), it is demonstrated that feedback control can suppress blowup and lead to the formation of spatially localized patterns in the weakly nonlinear regime. The effects of a delayed feedback are also investigated for both cases, and it is shown that delay can induce temporal oscillations as well as blowup.
