Electron collision frequency in plasmas

Abstract

In strongly coupled, degenerate plasmas, the electron collision frequency has been described by the Ziman formula with the ion-ion correlations modeled by the classical one-component plasma (OCP). However, this model fails to reproduce the correct quantum Lenard-Balescu result in the weak-coupling limit. It is demonstrated here that a recently obtained correlation-function expression for the collision frequency reduces to the Ziman and Lenard-Balescu results in the appropriate limits. In addition, it is shown that an extension of the Lenard-Balescu result to include strong coupling can be interpreted as the Ziman collision frequency with the OCP structure factor replaced by the ion-ion structure factor for a two-component system. Numerical estimates of this structure factor are used to calculate the electrical conductivity in moderately coupled ($\ensuremath{\Gamma}\ensuremath{\le}2$) hydrogen plasmas.