Staff scientist and lead author Valentin Karasiev’s paper “Tunable noninteracting free-energy density functionals for high-energy-density physics applications” has recently been promoted by the editors of Physics of Plasmas as an Editor’s Pick. Only 61 papers out of 800 published in 2023 were promoted as “Editor’s Picks,” highlighting the quality of scientific content of selected papers. This paper introduces the concept of a tunable noninteracting free-energy density functional and develops two one-parameter realizations. The functional, constructed as a simple one-parameter convex combination of two existing functionals, has already demonstrated its practical usability for establishing the high temperature end of the equation of state of deuterium and CHON resin for inertial confinement fusion applications.
