The role of collective effects in the kinetics of a molecular plasma generated by a particle beam. Application to nitrogen

Abstract

A molecular plasma generated by a particle beam generally departs strongly from a Maxwellian distribution and exhibits a pronounced depletion of electrons as soon as cold electrons cross the first vibrational barrier. We show that this situation produces screened Coulomb interactions that enlarge the Coulomb cross-section in the neighbourhood of this first vibrational threshold. Including these screened interactions through the Balescu–Lenard operator with all excitation transitions leads to a modification of the distribution at the first vibrational barrier. An application is given to the case of low-pressure nitrogen lasers.

Properties of the Lenard–Balescu collision operator: A numerical study

“…[11][12][13] Thus, the present work constitutes the first step towards the numerical solution of the Lenard-Balescu equation in more complex physical situations where the numerical solutions presented here can be used as a benchmark for more comprehensive codes. We remark, in particular, that the numerical method described in this paper has been successfully applied to solve the kinetic equations of dusty plasma, in order to study the evolution of the ion and electron distribution functions.…”