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On the A.C. electrical conductivity of a Lorentz gas

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 March 2009

J. H. M. Fu
Affiliation:
Department of Aerospace Engineering, The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan
R. S. B. Ong
Affiliation:
Department of Aerospace Engineering, The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan

Abstract

Often one is interested in the electrical conductivity of a plasma for frequencies of the applied electric field comparable to or greater than the effective collision frequency. For the purpose of obtaining an order of magnitude estimate of the conductivity a Lorentz gas model with a Fokker–Planck collision term is used. For this simple model a formula for the a.c. electrical conductivity for two limiting cases is derived in closed form. The first term of the expression for the conductivity in the case where w/k is very large agrees with that obtained by Bernstein & Trehan (1960) for the spatially homogeneous case, while the effect of the spatial gradients is indicated in the higher order terms. In the case where w and k are both equal to zero the expression for the d.c. electrical conductivity of Spitzer (1962) is recovered.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1968

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References

REFERENCES

Bernstein, I. B. & Trehan, S. K. 1960 Nuc. Fusion 1, 3Google Scholar
Comisar, G. C. 1963 Phys. Fluids 6, 76.Google Scholar
Spitzer, L. 1962 Physics of Fully Ionized Gases, 2d ed.New York: Interscience.Google Scholar