Effective coffision frequency and electron temperature in a weakly ionized argon plasma

Abstract

Herein is described a calculation of the effective coffision frequency νeffof a low- density, shock-heated argon plasma under the influence of a weak electric field which oscillates harmonically with angular frequency ω. It is shown that, for the high frequency case ω >whereis the collision frequency in a Maxwellian gas plasma, one has νeff⋍ 2, provided that the imaginary part of the argon plasma conductivity is negligibly small in comparison to the real part. The influence of the theoretical model used to calculate νeffon the values of the electron temperatureTederived from measurements is compared with the results obtained in a data reduction for which the hard-sphere model for particle encounters was utilized.