Fluctuations in a Plasma II: The Numerical Factor in the Coulomb Logarithm

Abstract

Considering the binary collision effects and the many-body correlation effects simultaneously, one makes it unnecessary to introduce the cut-off procedure to avoid the divergence of cross sections. The energy loss rate P of a charged particle moving fast through the plasma is obtained as follows: \begin{aligned} P{=}\frac{q^{2}{\omega_{0}}^{2}}{v}\ln\frac{2\mu v^{3}}{\gamma|q|e\omega_{0}}, \end{aligned} where ln γ=0.577, Euler's constant, q , v are the charge, speed of the moving particle, and ω 0 , µ, - e are the frequency of plasma oscillation, reduced mass, and charge of the electron, respectively. The rate R of the relaxation between ion and electron temperatures is