Research Interests

• Many-electron effects in optical properties of bulk solids and nanostructures
• Multiphase equations of state and phase diagrams of materials
• Optical properties of systems in extreme conditions of pressure and temperature
• Physics of dense, highly collisional plasmas.
• Finite-element continuum simulations of high energy density physics experiments

Personal Background

Lorin Benedict joined the Physics Division at the end of 1998 as a computational condensed matter theorist. Prior to being at LLNL, he was an NRC postdoc at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, MD, where he worked with Eric Shirley on the computation of excitonic effects in optical spectra of solids. He holds a BA in Physics from the University of Chicago (1992), and a PhD in Physics from the University of California at Berkeley (1996), where he worked in the groups of Steven Louie and Marvin Cohen. His thesis work was on predicting various properties of carbon nanotubes and other closely related materials. His current interests are three-fold: 1. Using phenomenological models to produce very accurate multi-phase equations of state for materials such as actinides, hydrogen, carbon, beryllium, etc. 2. Investigating the physics of dense, highly collisional plasmas using molecular dynamics and kinetic equations, and 3. Employing ASC multi-physics continuum codes to analyze and design high energy density physics experiments.

Ph.D., Physics, University of California at Berkeley, 1996

B.A., Physics, University of Chicago, 1992

1. Damian C. Swift, Mandy Bethkenhagen, Alfredo A. Correa, Thomas Lockard, Sebastien Hamel, Lorin X. Benedict, Philip A. Sterne, and Bard I. Bennett, "High temperature ion-thermal behavior from average-atom calculations", Phys. Rev. E 101, 053201 (2020).
2. Damian C. Swift, Thomas Lockard, Raymond F. Smith, Christine J. Wu, and Lorin X. Benedict, "High pressure melt curve of iron from atom-in-jellium calculations", Phys. Rev. Res. 2, 023034 (2020).
3. Damian C. Swift, Thomas Lockard, Richard G. Kraus, Lorin X. Benedict, Philip A. Sterne, Mandy Bethkenhagen, Sebastien Hamel, and Bard I. Bennett, "Atom-in-jellium equations of state in the high energy-density regime", Phys. Rev. E 99, 063210 (2019).
4. Philip C. Myint, Alexander A. Chernov, Babak Sadigh, Lorin X. Benedict, Burl M. Hall, Sebastien Hamel, and Jonathan L. Belof, "Nanosecond freezing of water at high pressures: Nucleation and growth near the metastability limit", Phys. Rev. Lett. 121, 155701 (2018).
5. J. A. Gaffney et al., "A review of equation-of-state models for inertial confinement fusion materials", High Energy Density Physics 28, 7 (2018).
6. T. Doppner et al., “Absolute equation-of-state measurement for polystyrene from 25 to 60 Mbar using a spherically converging shock wave”, Phys. Rev. Lett. 121, 025001 (2018).
7. M. Millot et al., “Measuring the shock impedance mismatch between high-density carbon and deuterium at the National Ignition Facility”, Phys. Rev. B 97, 144108 (2018).
8. Christian R. Scullard, Susana Serna, Lorin X. Benedict, C. Leland Ellison, and Frank R. Graziani, “Analytic expressions for electron-ion temperature equilibration rates from the Lenard-Balescu equation”, Phys. Rev. E 97, 013205 (2018).
9. Shuai Zhang, Burkhard Militzer, Lorin X. Benedict, Francois Soubiron, Philip A. Sterne, and Kevin P. Driver, “Path integral Monte Carlo simulations of dense carbon-hydrogen plasmas”, J. Chem. Phys. 148, 102318 (2018).
10. L.A. Zepeda-Ruiz, B. Sadigh, A.A. Chernov, T. Haxhimali, A. Samanta, T. Oppelstrup, S. Hamel, L.X. Benedict, and J.L. Belof, “Extraction of effective solid-liquid interfacial free energies for full 3D solid crystallites from equilibrium MD simulations”, J. Chem. Phys. 147, 194704 (2017).
11. Philip C. Myint, Lorin X. Benedict, and Jonathan L. Belof, “Free energy models for ice VII and liquid water derived from pressure, entropy, and heat capacity relations”, J. Chem. Phys. 147, 084505 (2017).
12. Lorin X. Benedict, Michael P. Surh, Liam G. Stanton, Christian R. Scullard, Alfredo A. Correa, John I. Castor, Frank R. Graziani, Lee A. Collins, Ondrej Certik, Joel D. Kress, and Michael S. Murillo, "Molecular dynamics studies of electron-ion temperature equilibration in hydrogen plasmas within the coupled-mode regime", by Phys. Rev. E 95, 043202 (2017).
13. Michael P. Desjarlais, Christian R. Scullard, Lorin X. Benedict, Heather D. Whitley, and Ronald Redmer, "Density-functional calculations of transport properties in the non-degenerate limit and the role of electron-electron scattering", Phys. Rev. E 95, 033203 (2017).
14. Michael P. Surh, Lorin X. Benedict, and Babak Sadigh, "Magnetostructural transition kinetics in shocked iron", Phys. Rev. Lett. 117, 085701 (2016).
15. P.A. Sterne, L.X. Benedict, S. Hamel, A.A. Correa, J.L. Milovich, M.M. Marinak, P.M. Celliers, and D.E. Fratnaduono, "Equations of state for ablator materials in inertial confinement fusion simulations", J. Phys.: Conf. Ser. 717, 012282 (2016).
16. Catalin D. Spataru, Luke Shulenburger, and Lorin X. Benedict, "Ab initio many-body Green's function calculations of optical properties of LiF at high pressures", Phys. Rev. B 92, 245117 (2015).
17. Markus Daene, Soo Kyung Kim, Michael P. Surh, Daniel Aberg, and Lorin X. Benedict, "Density functional theory calculations of magnetocrystalline anisotropy energies for (Fe_{1-x}Co_{x})_{2}B", J. Phys. Condens. Matter
18. Heather D. Whitley, David M. Sanchez, Sebastien Hamel, Alfredo A. Correa, and Lorin X. Benedict, Molecular dynamics simulations of warm dense carbon ., Contrib. Plasma Phys. vol. 55, 390 (2015).
19. Heather D. Whitley, Christian R. Scullard, Lorin X. Benedict, John I. Castor, Amanda Randles, James N. Glosli, David F. Richards, Michael P. Desjarlais, and Frank R. Graziani, Lenard-Balescu calculations and classical molecular dynamics simulations of electrical and thermal conductivities of hydrogen plasmas  , Contrib. Plasma Phys. 55, 192 (2015).
20. R.F. Smith, J.H. Eggert, D.G. Braun, J.R. Patterson, R.E. Rudd, R. Jeanloz, T.S. Duffy, J. Biener, A.E. Lazicki, A.V. Hamza, J. Wang, T. Braun, L.X. Benedict, P.M. Celliers, and G.W. Collins, Ramp compression of diamond to 5 TPa  , Nature 511, 330 (2014).
21. Lorin X. Benedict, Kevin P. Driver, Sebastien Hamel, Burkhard Militzer, Tingting Qi, Alfredo A. Correa, A. Saul, and Eric Schwegler, Multiphase equation of state for carbon addressing high pressures and temperatures  , Phys. Rev. B 89, 224109 (2014).
22. Lorin X. Benedict, Michael P. Surh, John I. Castor, Saad A. Khairallah, Heather D. Whitley, David F. Richards, James N. Glosli, Michael S. Murillo, Christian R. Scullard, Paul Grabowski, David Michta and Frank R. Graziani, Molecular dynamics simulations and generalized Lenard-Balescu calculations of electron-ion temperature equilibration in plasmas  , Phys. Rev. E 86, 046406 (2012).
23. Sebastien Hamel, Lorin X. Benedict, Peter M. Celliers, M.A. Barrios, T.R. Boehly, G.W. Collins, T. Doppner, J.H. Eggert, D.R. Farley, D.G. Hicks, J.L. Kline, A. Lazicki, S. LePape, A.J. Mackinnon, J.D. Moody, H.F. Robey, E. Schwegler and Philip A. Sterne, Equation of state of CH_1.36: First-principles molecular dynamics simulations and shock-and-release wave speed measurements  , Phys. Rev. B 86, 094113 (2012).
24. Frank R. Graziani, Victor S. Batista, Lorin X. Benedict , John I. Castor, Hui Chen, Sophia N. Chen, Chris A. Fichtl, James N. Glosli, Paul E. Grabowski, Alexander T. Graf, Stefan P. Hau-Riege, Andrew U. Hazi, Saad A. Khairallah, Liam Krauss, A. Bruce Langdon, Richard A. London, Andreas Markmann, Michael S. Murillo, David F. Richards, Howard A. Scott, Ronnie Shepherd, Liam G. Stanton, Michael P. Surh, Jon C. Weisheit, Heather D. Whitley, Large-scale molecular dynamics of dense plasmas: the Cimarron project  High Energy Density Physics 8, 105 (2012).
25. Miguel A. Morales, Lorin X. Benedict, Daniel S. Clark, Eric Schwegler, Isaac Tamblyn, Stanimir A. Bonev, Alfredo A. Correa, and Steven W. Haan, Ab initio calculations of the equation of state of hydrogen in a regime relevant for inertial fusion applications  , High Energy Density Physics 8, 5 (2012).

Fellow of the American Physical Society, elected 2018