Classical Ion Energy Transport in a Presence of Steep Gradient

Abstract

A classical ion energy flux across a uniform magnetic field is investigated for a plasma with an arbitrary value of ρ/ L , where ρ is a Larmor radius for ions and L is a gradient scale length. A kinetic equation with an externally imposed Maxwellian source of particles and energy is solved by employing a Krook model collision operator. The resulting perpendicular energy flux is found to be nonlocally related to the density and pressure profiles. The perpendicular energy fluxes explicitly calculated for a simple density and pressure profile model are shown to change the dependency on ρ/ L from the conventional small ρ/ L regime to the large ρ/ L regime.