Book Description

The nonlocal electron and ion transport processes in weakly ionized plasmas are studied. The goal is to consider the most general ordering when the mean free path for the charged species is arbitrary with respect to the characteristic length scale in plasma and characteristic frequency is arbitrary with respect to collision frequency. For electron component, we present a rather general method of solving the Boltzmann equation, which is based on the expansion of the total distribution function (DF) in the series of the eigenfunctions of the collision operator. The coefficients in this expansion are related to the different velocity moments of the distribution function. The expansion of the DF in terms of the eigenfunctions of the collision operator is equivalent to the expansion in the series of a parameter 3 which is a measure of spatial and temporal uniformity 3=kl;hsp sp="0.167"3=w /nrp post="par" . As this parameter increases (the mean free path becomes larger and/or the characteristic length of plasma inhomogeneity decreases and/or characteristic frequency of plasma inhomogeneity increases), the larger number of terms should be included in the expansion procedure and in the limiting collisionless case all harmonics (all moments) must be included. The obtained infinite system of equations for the expansion coefficients is solved in terms of the continued fraction representation. We have calculated transport coefficients of a weakly ionized plasma that describe the relaxation processes for the arbitrary uniformity parameter 3 . In this case the transport coefficients become integro-differential operators acting on the lower moments (density, temperature, mean velocity, and external fields). As an example we consider the anomalous absorption of the electromagnetic wave by a weakly ionized plasma or anomalous skin effect. Unlike.