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Plasma Parameters - Wikipedia PDF
Plasma Parameters - Wikipedia PDF
All quantities are in Gaussian (cgs) units except energy and temperature expressed in eV and ion
mass expressed in units of the proton mass ; is charge state; is Boltzmann's
constant; is wavenumber; is the Coulomb logarithm.
Frequencies
…
electron gyrofrequency, the angular frequency of the circular motion of an electron in the
plane perpendicular to the magnetic field:
ion gyrofrequency, the angular frequency of the circular motion of an ion in the plane
perpendicular to the magnetic field:
electron plasma frequency, the frequency with which electrons oscillate (plasma oscillation):
Lengths …
electron thermal de Broglie wavelength, approximate average de Broglie wavelength of
electrons in a plasma:
classical distance of closest approach, the closest that two particles with the elementary
charge come to each other if they approach head-on and each has a velocity typical of the
temperature, ignoring quantum-mechanical effects:
electron gyroradius, the radius of the circular motion of an electron in the plane perpendicular
to the magnetic field:
ion gyroradius, the radius of the circular motion of an ion in the plane perpendicular to the
magnetic field:
plasma skin depth (also called the electron inertial length), the depth in a plasma to which
electromagnetic radiation can penetrate:
Debye length, the scale over which electric fields are screened out by a redistribution of the
electrons:
ion inertial length, the scale at which ions decouple from electrons and the magnetic field
becomes frozen into the electron fluid rather than the bulk plasma:
mean free path, the average distance between two subsequent collisions of the electron (ion)
with plasma components:
where is an average velocity of the electron (ion) and is the electron or ion collision
rate.
Velocities
…
electron thermal velocity, typical velocity of an electron in a Maxwell–Boltzmann distribution:
Alfvén velocity, the speed of the waves resulting from the mass of the ions and the restoring
force of the magnetic field:
in cgs units,
in SI units.
Dimensionless …
Collisionality
In the study of tokamaks, collisionality is a dimensionless parameter which expresses the ratio
of the electron-ion collision frequency to the banana orbit frequency.
where denotes the electron-ion collision frequency, is the major radius of the plasma, is
the inverse aspect-ratio, and is the safety factor. The plasma parameters and denote,
respectively, the mass and temperature of the ions, and is the Boltzmann constant.
Electron temperature
or the change in internal energy with respect to entropy, holding volume and particle number
constant. A practical definition comes from the fact that the atoms, molecules, or whatever
particles in a system have an average kinetic energy. The average means to average over the
kinetic energy of all the particles in a system.
The electron temperature of a plasma can be several orders of magnitude higher than the
temperature of the neutral species or of the ions. This is a result of two facts. Firstly, many
plasma sources heat the electrons more strongly than the ions. Secondly, atoms and ions are
much heavier than electrons, and energy transfer in a two-body collision is much more efficient if
the masses are similar. Therefore, equilibration of the temperature happens very slowly, and is
not achieved during the time range of the observation.
See also
Ball-pen probe
Langmuir probe
References
5. Mohr, Peter J.; Newell, David B.; Taylor, Barry N.; Tiesenga, E. (20 May 2019). "CODATA
Energy conversion factor: Factor x for relating K to eV" . The NIST Reference on Constants,
Units, and Uncertainty. National Institute of Standards and Technology. Retrieved
11 November 2019.
NRL Plasma Formulary – Naval Research Laboratory (2018)