Coulomb scattering in plasma revised

S. Gordienko; D. V. Fisher; J. Meyer-ter-Vehn

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Coulomb scattering in plasma revised

S. Gordienko·D. V. Fisher·J. Meyer-ter-Vehn

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Abstract

A closed expression for the momentum evolution of a test particle in weakly-coupled plasma is derived, starting from quantum many particle theory. The particle scatters from charge fluctuations in the plasma rather than in a sequence of independent binary collisions. Contrary to general belief, Bohr's (rather than Bethe's) Coulomb logarithm is the relevant one in most plasma applications. A power-law tail in the distribution function is confirmed by molecular dynamics simulation.

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S. Gordienko, D. V. Fisher, J. Meyer-ter-Vehn. 2003-05-13. Coulomb scattering in plasma revised. https://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0305050

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