Abstract
A uniform treatment of longitudinal waves or wave-like perturbations in neutral gases and plasmas is presented, using the method of kinetic transport theory in conjunction with a ten-moment collision model. The perturbations are considered to be generated by an oscillating boundary, and their spatial evolution for given frequency is investigated. Special emphasis is placed on the damping of the perturbations, as apparent from their spatial decay. The close intrinsic relation between longitudinal perturbations in plasmas and neutral gases is revealed by systematic variation of the collision to wave frequency ratio and of the charge number. The strong damping of neutral sound found in the small collision frequency limit is seen to be a continuous extension of Landau damping, either of ion-acoustic or Langmuir waves, when starting at the full charge number and reducing the latter to zero. Application of the present theory to experimental neutral sound data leads to almost quantitative agreement, from the near-collisionless to the collision-dominated limit.
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