Molecular Dynamics Simulations of the Dynamics of Correlations and Relaxation in an OCP

The short time dynamics of the transition from an initial nonequilibrium state to an equilibrium state is investigated for an OCP by molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. Two different initial configurations are considered which allow to study either the build-up of binary correlations or the relaxation of the single particle distribution. For a weakly coupled plasma the observed time scale for relaxation is much longer than the characteristic time for the correlation build-up while the two time scales become equal for nonideal plasmas with (gamma) > 0.5.