Abstract
Thomson scattering measurements of electron temperature have indicated that the electron temperature in thermal plasmas at 1 bar is up to 7000 K greater than the ion temperature. In these experiments, the heating of the electrons by the laser beam was taken into account by measuring their temperature as a function of laser pulse energy, and linearly extrapolating the results to zero pulse energy to obtain an unperturbed electron temperature. It is shown here that the absorption of laser energy by the electrons, and the specific heat and thermal conductivity of the plasma, are strongly dependent on the electron temperature, and therefore on the pulse energy. We use a single‐fluid model of the plasma to show that the linear extrapolation is invalid. We calculate unperturbed electron temperatures in agreement with ion and spectroscopic temperatures.
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