We solve the problem of the behavior of a gas plasma in a half-space analytically using the kinetic equation with the collision rate proportional to the modulus of the electron velocity. The plasma is in a variable external electric field. The specular reflection of electrons from the plasma boundary is used as a boundary condition. We use the solution to find the screened electric field.
Statement of the problemThe problem of the behavior of a collisionless gas plasma (see [1]) in the half-space located in an external longitudinal electric field (normal to the surface) was studied by Landau [2] in the case of purely specular reflection of electrons from the boundary. A more general case of boundary conditions was studied in [3], where an electric field located at a large distance from the plasma boundary was considered.We solved this problem analytically in [4]-[7]. The Maxwell plasma was studied in [4] and [5], and a degenerate plasma was studied in [6] and [7]. In these cases, the specular boundary conditions were considered in [4] and [6], and the diffusive ones, in [5] and [7]. The collisonless case was studied in [2], and the rate of electron collisions was assumed to be constant in [4]-[7].To describe the plasma behavior, the authors of [8] used the kinetic equation with the collision rate proportional to the modulus of the electron velocity and obtained an analytic solution for the skin-effect problem. Here, we use this equation to study the behavior of a plasma in a variable external electric field E 1 in a half-space. We neglect the response of ions to the external electric field [9].To describe the electron distribution function f (r, v, t), we use the Vlasov kinetic equation [10] with a self-consistent electric field and the collision integral in the Bhatnagar-Gross-Krook form with the effective rate (proportional to the modulus of the electron velocity) of collisions of electrons with plasma particles [8]:where e 0 is the electron charge, f * is the Maxwell distribution function,l is the mean free path of electrons, k B is the Boltzmann constant, m is the electron mass, n * is the parameter determined from the conservation law for the number of particles, v is the electron velocity, p